When you write a website dedicated to teaching stage lighting, the most common question you get is “Should I buy “X” light”, or “What lights should I buy”.

While it’s quite flattering that you’d like my opinion, the answer to the question is more about taking your needs into consideration than making a blanket statement!

In this article, I really want to break down what it takes to make a great purchasing decision and how you can identify your specific needs to buy the right lights.  This article is a broad picture of the major factors you should consider when buying new lights - for our top picks, be sure to visit our Gear Guide here!

First Steps

Most people first consider their budget and plan their purchase based on the wad of cash that they have to spend.  This is all well and good, but often can result in buyers remorse – whether because you bought too expensive of a light, too cheap of a light, or just the wrong light, even if it fit your budget!

Instead, I want you to first look at features, convenience, durability, and ease of use.

Features

The first and probably most important thing to consider is: does this light do what you need this light to do?  Is it bright enough, and does it accomplish the other goals that you have for it - whether that be lighting people or scenery, doing cool mid-air effects in haze, or some other purpose.

Once you confirm those basics, is the light the correct brightness for what you need?  While the "correct brightness" can be tough to pin down, you can determine whether it's bright enough in white to keep up with the rest of your lights, or whether it's WAY overkill.  Both are bad - if the lights aren't bright enough, then you'll be frustrated with them constantly.  If they are WAY too bright, you'll run them at super low percentages which can make their fades look choppy, and more critically - probably means that the light is going to be larger/heavier than you need!

Convenience

How easy is the light to set up and tear down? How much does the light weigh, and is it suitable to be set up by one person, or will you need a helper?  Can you use power jumper cables between the fixtures and possibly with other fixtures you already own?

For example, a 4-Par type lighting systems are incredibly easy to setup, and you’ll feel like you’ve set up 4 lights in the time it normally takes to set up 1 light – because you just did!  These can be a great choice for gigging bands who have really short setup times. 

If you set up and tear down every show, this may be the right choice for you, but it probably isn’t the best value for an installed venue!

Durability

How tough are you on your gear?  On this website alone, I know I have both readers who will tour their lights with bands or do live productions with them, as well as readers who will use them in their personal or church lighting rigs, taking gentle care of them always.

Or will your lights be installed, only moved once per year or even less?  Does it matter if the light in question has a cheap plastic case, or is a metal body required?

Generally, the more expensive a light is, the more durable the feel of the case and yoke is.  When I’m looking at LED fixtures, I prefer to buy fixtures that have a fanless design – this makes for less moving parts to break down the road, and they’re typically silent, too!  But, in brighter LED fixtures there are often fans that are very quiet and only run when necessary, and these are often fine as well.  The biggest key is to make sure you know what you're getting and that it's optimized for what YOU need.

While thinking about durability, I also like to check out the light’s warranty.  I really like to see if the manufacturer actually believes in the light enough to guarantee it’s not going to die right away!  For this reason, I don’t advise folks to buy any light that has less than a one-year warranty.  On cheaper, lower-end lights you're not going to see more than a 1 year warranty, but on most lights worth buying you'll see a 2 year.  Higher end, pro-grade lights may have longer warranties, though admittingly, the 2-year is pretty standard across many brands.  That doesn't mean it'll fail on the day after 2 years, but to be transparent, once 2 years goes by, it's tough to determine if any failure in the light is from a manufacturing defect or the user's use/wear and tear on the light!

Ease Of Use

When you sit down to program the light, will it work well with your console?  Super-basic, fader-based consoles do still exist, but they aren't typically ideal for color changing LED fixtures and moving lights.  Most often, we recommend a software or hardware console that allows you to choose colors and manipulate parameters like Pan and Tilt in a more natural way.

At this point in your buying journey, it’s a very good idea to identify some lights that will meet your needs.  Pick out a variety of fixtures to compare regardless of price – we’ll cover that as we move through the next step.

Once you’ve thought through these basic aspects of your lighting needs, it’s time to dive deep into the budget, coverage and accessories.

Dive Deep

Budget

Since you’ve entered this conversation with the end goal being to buy something, you probably either had a budget in mind in the beginning, or are forming one now!

Typically, there will be multiple lights that meet your needs as outlined above, at different price points.  While there are always other pro's and con's to weigh out, you'll at least be able to see the likely price range that your final choice will be within. 

Sometimes, the final choice will be the cheapest, other times it won't - don't automatically choose the cheapest fixture and assume it'll be the best fit, and don't automatically ignore the cheapest fixture, as it may be the best fit!

Then, let’s think about coverage.

Coverage

When it comes to coverage, there are 2 main specifications that we need to consider – is the light of the right angle for your needs, and is it bright enough?

Here’s my guide to washing your stage evenly.  Use this guide to ensure you get the right angles out of your lights!

Brightness, on the other hand, is a bit more confusing and complicated!  Before LEDs became insanely popular, you had incandescent and arc-beam lights, and that was pretty much it.  If you wanted to compare 1 unit to another from a spec sheet, it was generally pretty easy to do.

Then LED’s hit the scene.  Different manufacturers use all sorts of different standards and methods for measuring and documenting brightness, and what we ended up with is a mess!  For this reason, we recommend reaching out and have us do a comparison for you!   

You can read more about comparing the brightness of different fixtures here!

If you hit a moment of realization that you’re not going to be able to cover as big of an area as you wanted for your budget, don’t cheap out!  Buying less of the correct lights and adding more later is far better than wasting your money on something that doesn’t meet your needs and will break or need to be replaced later.

Accessories

Last, but not least, we cannot forget about the accessories that we need to make these lights shine! (Pun 100%intended 🙂 )

Do you need clamps, safety cables, DMX cables, lighting stands, truss, extension cords or a DMX splitter?  All of these can eat up your budget fast if you’re not careful!

Wrapping It Up

Okay, so obviously, this is a LOT. If you haven’t taken into consideration all of these different variables before, we can help! At Learn Stage Lighting GEAR, you can contact us with some information about your needs and we’ll reply back with our recommendations at your personalized price!

I truly hope that at the end of the day you purchase the right lights for your needs and if you're in the US, we would LOVE to earn your business!  While this guide isn’t my typical “nuts and bolts” how-to guide, I hope it’s got you thinking…and more importantly, I hope it’s given you some insight as to what you should look for in your next lighting purchase!