Thomas Gerdon accentuates the uniqueness of each exhibit with customised lighting

The international furniture and furnishings fair imm cologne took place at Koelnmesse in Cologne between 14–18 January. The German furniture manufacturer Bretz Wohnträume GmbH stands out at every furniture trade fair with its creative, designer upholstered furniture in soft shapes and bright colours. But in 2024, the stand of the family business based in Gensingen, Rhineland-Palatinate, caused even more of a stir. The reason for this was the lighting, which emphasised the unique characteristics and colours of each piece of furniture to optimum effect.

This was made possible by lighting designer Thomas Gerdon (GERDON DESIGN) with many lighting patterns and a total of 220 GLP impression X5 Compact.

Commenting on the special features of this trade fair stand lighting, Gerdon says: “Bretz furniture is really extraordinary, both in terms of shape and colour. In addition, the company often works with textured velour fabrics, which can appear lighter or significantly darker depending on the orientation of the fibres. Illuminating such products with a standard colour temperature inevitably produces suboptimal results.”

In order to enhance the effect and reveal the full potential of these remarkable pieces of furniture, Thomas Gerdon had been previously brought on board by company owner and managing director Norbert Bretz for the 2023 trade fair, where he illuminated the trade fair stand with GLP impression X4.

After the introduction of GLP’s new impression X5 Series, with the innovative RGBL colour mixing and iQ.Gamut colour algorithm, the designer saw the opportunity to take the quality up a notch – a belief that was borne out by the manufacturer during various lighting tests.

“A huge step forward in terms of quality”

“The lighting with the impression X5 Compact was actually a huge step forward compared to the X4,” Gerdon states. “The colour quality turned out to be so improved that everyone noticed the difference straight away.” This rubber-stamped the decision to use the X5 Compact as exhibition stand lighting.

Instead of 19 LEDs, the impression X5 Compact contains seven powerful 40W RGBL LEDs. Its super-fast 1:16 zoom mechanism allows penetrating 3.5° beams, as well as homogeneous washes up to 60°. With the help of the new iQ.Gamut colour algorithm, the impression guarantees consistent colour quality with CRI 85 / TLCI 75 at 3,200K. At just 7.5kg, it is also a real lightweight that can fit even in the tightest of spaces thanks to its extremely compact dimensions.

Although Thomas Gerdon had already successfully used the larger impression X5 Wash in numerous TV productions, the imm cologne deployment was his first project with impression X5 Compact.

“The X5 Compact is fantastic for trade fair lighting,” the designer enthuses. “Anyone who thinks this is the next run-of-the-mill wash light could hardly be more wrong. The new X5 RGBL colour mixing and the iQ.Gamut colour algorithm achieve incredibly good and precise white tones. This allowed us to individually illuminate areas of the Bretz stand with warm or cold lighting, depending on what the respective pieces of furniture required. Nevertheless, we also created presets that we went over piece by piece on site together with the company owner, in 100 Kelvin increments. This fine tuning in particular works much better with the impression X5 Compact than with other devices. This creates a completely different quality – and that often makes the difference in the premium segment and at trade fairs in general.”

The quality was there for all to see: “In fact, the stand employees were repeatedly asked about the excellent lighting by trade fair visitors and competitors,” explains Gerdon.

In addition to the quality of the lighting, the form factor of the X5 Compact was also crucial, given the low ceiling height of only 4.5m.

The 220 GLP impression X5 Compact were supplied by CGS Dry Hire, while the technical service provider for the Bretz company stand was elfplus+ Veranstaltungstechnik GmbH from Cologne.