Your image printed into the membrane itself, then lit from behind by a 24V LED field. The graphic and the light source are the same surface, so there is no fixture in the room and no frame around the picture.
A backlit printed ceiling is a translucent stretch membrane with a full-size graphic printed directly onto it, tensioned below a field of 24V LED. The image is not a film applied over the membrane and it is not a panel hung under a light box. The ink goes onto the same sheet that carries the tension, so the graphic stretches flat with the material and there is no laminate edge at the perimeter. When the LEDs are off the ceiling reads as a printed surface. When they are on, the light comes through the artwork and the whole field becomes the fixture.
We do this in-house in Dania Beach. We print the sheet on our own large-format press, weld it, bend the perimeter profiles on our own CNC, build the LED field and install it with our own crew, on one drawing set. That matters more on a printed job than on a plain one, because a printed backlit ceiling only works if the print, the LED pitch and the cavity depth are designed against each other. A shop that only prints will hand you a beautiful file that goes dark in the shadows. A shop that only installs LED will light a field that was never color-corrected for transmitted light. We do both, and on a large commercial project we build a physical mockup with your actual artwork and your actual LED before anything gets committed.
We print onto the translucent membrane before it is welded and tensioned. There is no adhesive layer, no laminate, no film edge at the perimeter. The graphic takes the same tension as the rest of the sheet and stays flat. Cleaning is the same as any stretch membrane, a damp cloth and a mild non abrasive cleaner. We hand over the cleaning instruction for your specific printed sheet at closeout.
A file that looks right on paper looks heavy and muddy when you push light through it. We run backlit artwork on a reduced ink curve and proof it over an LED panel set to the CCT specified for your job, not under shop fluorescents. You approve the proof lit the way the ceiling will actually be lit.
We bend the perimeter profiles ourselves, so a printed backlit field can be a rectangle, an oval, a river shape or a wall panel that turns the corner onto the ceiling. Nothing here is a tile or a module, so the image does not have to be broken up to fit a grid. The framed forms come from our LuxForm profile family.
The spaces where we install this system most. The rest of the range is on the lighting systems page.
Flagship and retail interiors, where the ceiling carries the brand graphic instead of a wall panel doing it.
Typically sky scenes, water, or commissioned artwork over a bar or a dining room.
Imaging suites, infusion bays and pediatric rooms, where the patient spends the whole visit looking up.
Lobbies, elevator lobbies and conference rooms, where a printed gradient or graphic gives a windowless room a focal plane.
Pool enclosures, spa rooms and wellness suites, where the humidity rules out most printed finishes.
Over a primary bedroom, a home theater ceiling, or a basement that has no daylight to work with.
Ten steps, in the order they happen on a real job.
These are numbers from our own shop and our own installs. They are shop standards we build to, not laboratory data. On a large commercial project we confirm them against your specific artwork on a mockup before you commit.
The membrane has been tested to ASTM E84, per finish, on white specimens: gloss flame spread 5, smoke developed 300; matte 10 and 300; satin 15 and 250. The laboratory assigned no classification. The specimens were not mounted per ASTM E2573, the test covers the membrane only and not a plenum assembly, and the material is not permitted in return air plenums on this data. The specimens were also unprinted. We hold no fire test data on printed membrane. If your project needs a fire performance statement that covers the printed sheet, raise it early and we will put the question to the material supplier in writing before you specify it.
The governing relationship is pitch against depth, and the safe rule is that row pitch should never exceed the clear cavity depth. Our shop standard on a plain white luminous ceiling is rows at 4 in on center with 6 in of clear cavity, 6 in on center with 8 in, and 8 in on center with 10 to 12 in. On a printed field we tighten that by one step, or we add 2 in of cavity. Two reasons. The print reduces transmission, so we drive the LEDs harder and any unevenness gets amplified. And the eye has something to compare against. On a blank white ceiling a small variation across the field disappears. Behind a photograph of a sky, that same variation reads as a band. Six inches of clear cavity is our practical minimum for a printed backlit field. Eight to ten is comfortable. Under 4 in you are into a shallow build that needs dense tape at a tight pitch, and we will say so plainly before you commit. On a large commercial project we prove the build with a mockup first.
The bare translucent membrane measured 42.0 percent diffused transmission at Poznan University of Technology under CIE 130-1998. That is a test report on unprinted material and it is the only measured transmission figure we hold. We do not have measured transmission for printed film and we will not quote one. What we do instead is size the LED field for the darkest area of the artwork that still has to read, not for the average of the image. That is the practical design move, and it is why we ask for the file early rather than at fabrication.
Three things happen and all three need to be in the design conversation. First, transmitted color reads darker and more saturated than the same ink viewed in reflection, so we print backlit files at roughly 60 to 70 percent of the ink density we would use for a front-lit ceiling. Second, the tonal range compresses at the bottom. Light areas go luminous and lift beautifully. Dark areas go close to black and become silhouette, and any detail living down there disappears. Our shop guidance is to keep the darkest detail you actually want people to see above roughly 30 percent brightness in the file, and to use anything below that as deliberate graphic shape, not as content. Third, the LED CCT tints everything. At 3000K whites go warm and cyans get pushed. 4000K is the neutral reference we proof against unless the job specifies otherwise. If tunable white is specified we proof at the middle of the range and tell you up front that the image warms as it dims toward 2700K, which is usually what a client wants in hospitality and usually not what a brand manager wants over a logo.
Skies, water, clouds, foliage, abstract gradients and pattern work are forgiving. They live in mid and high tones and nobody has a memory reference for the exact color. Skin tones, night scenes, and exact brand colors are the hard ones. For a specified brand color under transmission we run a physical proof strip and match it lit, because a brand book value chosen for print or screen has no defined appearance in transmitted light.
We ask for raster artwork at 150 dpi at final installed size. Our floor is 100 dpi at final size for ceilings under about 12 ft, and 72 dpi at final size is workable above 14 ft where nobody gets close enough to resolve it. Send logos, type and line work as vector and they scale without limit. Do not send a 300 dpi file scaled to 20 percent and expect it to hold. A 20 ft ceiling at 150 dpi is a very large file and that is normal for this product.
PVC membrane is cut undersize and stretched into the profile, our shop standard is 6 to 7 percent undersize, which means a file printed at exactly 1:1 arrives on the ceiling stretched. We pre-scale the artwork by the inverse of our cut factor in prepress, per axis, so a circle in your file is a circle on the ceiling and a logo keeps its proportions. The compensation factor is different on the knit textile base, which installs cold, so we set it per base and per job. If another vendor has never mentioned this to you, that is worth asking about.
Our press runs to 16 ft 6 in wide. Beyond that the field either takes a welded seam or gets panelized. A high-frequency weld is about half an inch wide and the material is doubled through it, so it passes less light, and on a backlit field it reads as a faint darker line. It is not a defect and it carries the same tension as the rest of the sheet, but you will see it on a flat sky gradient if you put it there. Four ways we handle it, in the order we prefer them. One, orient the field so the un-seamed dimension runs the long way and the room stays inside our 16 ft 6 in print width. Two, panelize deliberately with AP-212 or AP-213 profile between fields, so the joint becomes a designed reveal instead of an apology, and split the artwork across panels with a 2 in bleed on each edge. Three, hide the weld inside the image, along a cloud edge, a tree line, a branch, a horizon or the dark band of a gradient. Never across a face, and never through the middle of an even sky. Four, where a genuinely seamless field wider than our 16 ft 6 in print width is required, we look at the wide-format knit textile base, which runs seamless to 16 ft 8 in, and we confirm print behavior and translucency on that base for the specific job before we promise it.
This is the constraint architects most often discover too late. Drivers cannot be buried above a tensioned membrane with no access. Give us a closet, a soffit with a hatch, above a millwork cabinet, or an access panel. Minimum 18 x 18 in of access, and keep it within about 20 to 25 ft of the run it serves. The run from the driver to the field is low voltage. Whether that run qualifies as a Class 2 circuit depends on the driver specified for your job and how it is listed, so confirm the circuit classification and any conduit requirement with the electrical engineer. Feed every run from both ends where you can.
In the order we actually see them go wrong.
Printed PVC is an interior product for conditioned space. Keep it out of direct sun from a skylight or a west glass wall, because sustained direct UV on a printed membrane will shift it over time. It handles humidity well, which is why it works in pool enclosures and spa rooms. The membrane can be de-tensioned and re-tensioned for service above it, which is how you get at the LED field or a driver later without cutting anything.
Yes, faintly, and you should plan for it rather than hope. Our press runs to 16 ft 6 in wide. Beyond that we weld, and a high-frequency weld doubles the material for about half an inch, so it passes less light and reads as a thin darker line when backlit. It will not open up and it is not a defect, but it is visible on a flat sky gradient. We deal with it three ways: orient the field so the seamed direction is the short one, panelize deliberately with an AP-212 or AP-213 profile so the joint becomes a designed reveal, or place the weld inside the image along a cloud edge, a tree line or a dark gradient band. We show you the seam location on the prepress proof before anything is printed.
No, and we will tell you that in writing rather than send you a number we cannot stand behind. We hold no LM-79, LM-80, TM-21 or IES data for the backlit printed assembly, so we do not publish lumens, footcandles or efficacy. What we do hold is a light transmission test report on the unprinted translucent membrane, 42.0 percent diffused, measured at Poznan University of Technology under CIE 130-1998. For anything beyond that we work from the strip manufacturer’s published data and dimensioned sections, and on a large commercial project we build a physical mockup at the specified cavity depth with your actual artwork for the design team to review. On a printed ceiling that is more useful than a photometric file anyway, because the variable that decides the result is the artwork, not the strip.
Because you are looking at it in transmission instead of reflection. Light coming through ink reads darker and more saturated than the same ink with light bouncing off it, and the bottom of the tonal range compresses hard. Anything below roughly 30 percent brightness in your file will go close to silhouette. We correct for this in prepress by printing backlit files at about 60 to 70 percent of front-lit ink density, and we proof the file over an LED panel set to the CCT specified for your job so you approve it lit the way it will actually live.
Six inches of clear cavity minimum for a printed field, eight to ten preferred, measured from the LED plane to the finished ceiling. The cavity interior painted flat white. Nothing inside the lit field that we have not coordinated, because sprinklers, hangers, duct bellies and junction boxes silhouette straight through the artwork. And a real driver location outside the field that a technician can reach: a closet, a soffit hatch, above millwork, minimum 18 x 18 in of access, within about 20 to 25 ft of the run it serves. Drivers cannot be buried above a tensioned membrane. That is the coordination item that most often surfaces late, so we flag it at the first drawing review.
150 dpi at final installed size is what we ask for. Our floor is 100 dpi at final size for ceilings under about 12 ft, and 72 dpi at final size is fine above 14 ft. Send logos, type and line work as vector. The thing to avoid is a high-dpi file at a small physical size, because dpi only means something once the dimensions are set at 1:1. A 20 by 30 ft ceiling at 150 dpi is a very large file and that is expected for this product. We will tell you before printing if the file will not hold at the size, and we will show you a crop at 1:1 so you can judge it yourself.
Dimmed and tuned, yes. The LED field runs 24V constant voltage on 0-10V, DALI-2, DMX or a wireless control system, and tunable white 2700-6500K is available if the room needs to shift through the day. Note that as a tunable field warms toward 2700K the printed image warms with it, which usually reads well in hospitality and usually not over a brand color, so we proof at the mid setting and tell you what happens at the ends. Changing the graphic later is a membrane replacement, not a repair. The profiles, the LED field and the drivers all stay, we print a new sheet and re-tension it into the same frame, which is a fraction of the original cost and is a real advantage for retail where the campaign changes.
Profile drawings and the color chart are in the profile library and the technical library. Lighting-specific documents sit under lighting downloads. CAD files are sent on request, usually within one business day.
Nothing on that second list is substituted with an estimate. If your specification calls for one of them, raise it at the drawing review and we will tell you in writing what we can and cannot support.
Our profile cross-sections, dimensions and the full color chart live in the technical library. CAD files are sent on request, usually within one business day.
A tile, panel or module system has to break the graphic across a grid, and the joint positions are fixed by the product rather than by the image. We print onto one tensioned membrane, in any outline our own CNC can bend, on ceilings and walls both, and we place the seam where the artwork can carry it instead of where a module ends. Printing the image into the lit surface itself is not something a luminous panel product does at all.
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Send the image and the ceiling size. We proof it at scale, price it and confirm the lead time the same day.
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