CLOUD Neon ceiling fixture

Warm white neon mounted to tubular steel frame

We were asked to build a neon chandelier light fixture for a Manhattan office building based on a technique and design we developed for the ceiling fixtures we built for 56 Leonard in Tribeca. The technique allows an outlined letter or shape in neon to be supported by a central steel tube, with tube supports mounted at complementary angles. This process integrates the armature into the overall design and adds dimensionality to the 2D lettering. After drawing everything up in CAD, the first step was building our armature. We started by calculating the radius of all the bends in the letters we were making, and rolling .75” steel tube to match.

Eddie rolling steel tube to the correct radius

Once we had all our bends made in the tube, we then had to make precise cuts and line up the curved sections of tube with straight sections to get accurate letters.

Laying out rolled and cut sections of tube against a full scale paper pattern

Once we had everything laid out on our mounting template, it was simple enough to cut our straight lengths of tube and weld them in place. We repeated this process for each letter, and then sanded the welds down for a smooth finish.

Letters made from rolled welded steel tube laid out on our shop floor

From here we made a simple jig to make sure we placed our standoffs at the exact right angle to support the neon tubes. This helped us get a consistent angle and accurate placement of our neon tube supports. We pre-drilled our holes and sent the armature off to powder-coating, but not before checking our steel armature against the neon letters to triple check that everything lined up perfectly. We mounted the neon to our steel armature on site, and hung our armature from pre-determined rig points in the ceiling.

We also installed wall-mounted neon behind the reception desk on the same floor of the building. We made sure to keep consistent corner bends and put breaks in the neon on the straight sections.

Contact