Post #653270 by mike and marie on Mon, Sep 24, 2012 9:00 PM

The star ceiling above the dance floor was a challenge. We felt that this area absolutely had to have some kind of realistic star effect, but all the fiber optic systems we saw were too bulky for the space we had or they required a drop ceiling. For a while we just thought about painting the whole ceiling black and then hanging coarsely woven burlap above it, but were concerned that if we did it wrong it would look like you were standing under a big mosquito net. We kept coming back to fiber optics because they looked the most realstic, but no matter what we looked into we saw it just wouldn't work. It seemed almost like the star ceiling wasn't going to happen. That is, until we looked into LED and did some thinking ... so we eventually decided to make our own.

First, out came one of the ceiling lights and we put an outlet on that switch:

We mapped out a frame for the ceiling area using lightweight thin black posterboard:

Drew plumb lines on the ceiling for the frame:

Attached the frame to the ceiling with toggle bolts, wrapping around existing ductwork and vents:

Then mounted LED string lighting on the ceiling inside the frame area, plugging into the ceiling outlets:

Secured all boards to framework,

made 10,000 pinholes,

turned out the lights and looked up:

[ Edited by: mike and marie 2012-09-24 21:06 ]