Mindseye provides lighting strategy for restaurant

The improvements at these two restaurants follows with a view to rolling out a new lighting concept across the country.

Pizza Express has a lighting strategy synonymous with its brand and corporate image; individually spotlighting each table.

In recent years the clarity of the scheme has suffered as the chain has struggled to keep pace with lighting technology and navigate through the requirements of current legislation.

Mindseye were selected following input given to a residential refurbishment project, which turned out to be for the Design Director of Pizza Express.

The Pizza Express property portfolio is large and varied, so a strategy needed to be developed to deal with differences in terms of ceiling heights and types of buildings, while maintaining visual identity.

Pizza Express has a new zoning strategy within their restaurants so Mindseye was asked to consider the lighting to help distinguish different areas.

One of the main challenges was to introduce a new track and spotlighting scheme.

The main focus of the lighting concept was to create different pools of light with varying light intensities for the restaurants’ zones.

This was done using the same fitting, but with different reflectors and lenses and only using two lamp types.

The remainder of our scheme focussed on accentuating feature areas.

In the Gloucester Quays restaurant, large ceiling rafts with integral track are suspended within the 12m high space.

Delivering spotlighting onto the tables but also an uplighting element is provided from the same track.

The Lucent track fitting was modified specifically for this project to allow the head to tilt in order to uplight the ceiling area.

Fittings used were: Lucent; Prospot; Track mounted Spotlight with various reflectors High Output Linear LED strip; for shelf lighting and Pizzaiola counter details Linear Fluorescent Batten, warm white lamp; for window treatments and banquette seating uplighting.