How to light up a stained glass window?

February 7, 2006 9:50 AM

I'm looking for the best way to light up a large stained glass window at night. Any suggestions?

I've tried to install floodlights or spot lights behind it but all I get is a bright dot in the center and cannot see the rest of the glass. I think some type of reflective light must be the answer. Have any of you done this before?

posted by Psharden to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

How large? 4' flourescent srtip lights are cheap and economical to run. mount strip light to piece of wood, mount wood to wall under window with bulb throwing max light through window. Cost: $10-15. One light not enough? But a second and mount in on the other side of the window. If you want, you could build some sort of light shield too, to direct all the light out the window.
posted by cosmicbandito at 10:02 AM on February 7, 2006

What cosmicbandito said...
You need to add a diffuser as well, otherwise you'll see the bulbs through the stained glass. A sheet of white acrylic would do.
posted by lorbus at 10:14 AM on February 7, 2006

Do you need to be able to see through the window at other times? Does it need to be non-ugly from the inside?

What you want is some way to diffuse the light before it gets to the window.

There are lots of common ways to do this.

* Diffuse the light at the source: instead of using floods, use something that is not a "spotlight", like mentioned before, flourescent lights (reasonably far from the windows) or use something to diffuse the light at the source -- think of the big umbrellas photographers use. The flood either passes through the umbrella, or a different type is used to reflect light off the umbrella

* diffuse the light at the window. Here you'd want something that would take a not-terribly-diffuse light source, and diffuse it more. A sheet of white plexiglass comes to mind, or a translucent sheet of white fabric, for example. When I shot portraits I made a big rectangular stand out of PVC pipe and attached white fabric to it like a fitted sheet. I'd stand this a few feet from the subject, with light shining through the fabric.

Anyway, the basic idea is you want to "soften" the light. Think of how the shadow from a bare bulb looks compared to a nice lampshade. Bare bulb = harsh shadows and bright areas, lampshade = soft shadows, more light spread over a larger area.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:17 AM on February 7, 2006

Here's some examples of what I mean:

Pass through diffuse lighting

OK, fine. One example.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:23 AM on February 7, 2006

For what it's worth, I made some stained glass lightboxes for a friend. These were small, maybe 10x15 windows, that he wanted to mount of the wall. I made a shallow wooden box, put some lights in them, put some reflective material in the bottom of the box, and put a sheet of white plexi on top, with the stained glass window mounted on top. This works great. To do the same for an actual window, though, you'd have to build this box into the window frame and it would totally obscure the window from the inside.

Now that I think about, what might work well is a screen you could mount to the ceiling, and pull down at night. You'd have 2 or more spots right near the wall the window is on, pointed AWAY from the window, INTO the screen. This would reflect back and out the window. This way, the window would not be obstructed in the day time.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:27 AM on February 7, 2006

Previous answers to a similar question. In that situation it was hanging against a wall. Are you trying to make the window visible from outside at night, or inside? Making it visible outside is pretty difficult, without an awful lot of light inside, and the lights would get in the way of seeing it from inside during the day.
posted by beagle at 10:28 AM on February 7, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks folks - those are great ideas and I'll take the suggestions.
posted by Psharden at 11:34 AM on February 7, 2006

I am doing something similar in the attic ventilation whole in one of my gables, when building this kind of lightbox, do you need to worry about heat buildup?
posted by stormygrey at 11:59 AM on February 7, 2006

I disagree with most of the above advice. If you want maximum clarity and color from the outside of the window at night, you need plenty of light, of broad spectrum, evenly distributed across the window. And if you want to enjoy the window during the day from the inside, you need to have a lighting source that doesn't obstruct the window. The solution to both issues is the same, and is one that has been used for a long time, particularly in church window lighting. And that is, tah-dah! long throw theatrical lighting fixtures.

Basically, you mount at least two lensed ellipsoidal reflector fixtures (Section 5.03 of linked page, above) some distance back from the window, in such a way that the fixtures and the window form something of a triangle, where the fixtures are at the end points of the triangle base leg, the length of that base leg being 2 to 4 times the window's width. The fixtures are usually hung from the ceiling, or side walls, with a distance to the window of something like 10 to 30 feet, depending on the focal length of fixture lenses, and the power of the lights they contain. You use the lenses and the masking shutters of the fixtures to direct broadly focused beams towards the window. The overall size of the beam is approximately that of the window, and the control shutters of the fixture are used to "mask off" spill over to adjacent wall areas.

Depending on the size of the window, and the colors and type of glass it is made of, you may need quite a bit of light to achieve the external effect you wish to have. Theatrical fixtures are available in sizes with large enough light output to handle almost any situation (and of course you can gang as many units as you need to achieve the brightness you want), but if you get to more than about 1000 watts of total wattage for your fixtures, you would need a dedicated circuit for your lighting, as it will require more current than is safe to draw from most North American 15 amp 110 VAC circuits.

Theatrical fixtures may be dimmed using conventional dimmer controls of appropriate capacity. You do need to provide proper mounting as these things can weigh quite a bit, particularly in the larger sizes. And, you do need to provide plenty of ventilation, as the common light sources used in these devices will throw off a fair amount of heat in operation.
posted by paulsc at 12:44 PM on February 7, 2006

Is this mounted in an actual window, or just in a frame on display? If it's loose, the lightbox is your way to go.
posted by middleclasstool at 6:10 PM on February 7, 2006