Parliament in Colours: Cameo Lights up Palace of Westminster

In celebration of the coronation of King Charles III on 6th May, Palace of Westminster in London was illuminated in the iconic colors of the Union Jack – red, white, and blue. The home of the UK Parliament is a worldwide famous building dating from 1840 with iconic architecture. To illuminate the Gothic-style exterior facade in the national colours, lighting designer David Bishop chose a total of 74 units of Cameo ZENIT W600 LED Wash Lights, supplied by Version 2 Lights.

The IP65-rated ZENIT W600 fixtures were placed at the base of the building’s facade over a width of more than 250 metres by David Bishop and Gaffer Matthew Zelmanowicz, focused to uplight the historic building with a beam angle of 18°. When choosing the colours, the lighting team didn’t have to think twice: blue, white and red – alternating across the entire width of Palace of Westminster.

“The Zenit W600 was the obvious choice”, says David Bishop. “Its power, reliability and IP rating combine to produce stunning colours on any chosen canvas. In particular, the punch of the white chip in the W600 suited this application as we needed to ensure the naturally warm stone of the Palace translated into pure white to make the traditional red, white, and blue associated with the UK. The colour consistency across individual units is great too – even when white was mixed with some blue, each unit in this setting was absolutely identical.”

Version2 Lights knows its way around royal events. The rental service provider already equipped Queen Elizabeth II’s (†) platinum throne jubilee in 2022 with hundreds of Cameo fixtures, including the ZENIT W600, and illuminated both the open-air stage and Buckingham Palace in the background for the famous Party at the Palace.

Simon Perrot, Version 2 Account Manager, adds: “The ZENIT W600 boasts an impressive output and has come into its own on some of our larger outside broadcast productions. We see these fixtures appearing on more and more kit lists from leading television lighting directors, such as David Bishop. The W600 has rapidly become a dependable workhorse fixture for both studio and location work.”