Truss, rigging and lighting hire for a hall stand

The stand design comes back from the agency with a lit sign floating three metres above the floor, and nobody in the room asks the only question that matters: what is holding it up. At the Frankfurt exhibition grounds the answer determines a lead time, an approval, a hall charge and possibly a redesign, and it has to be answered months before anyone thinks about stools.

There are two ways to get something into the air over a stand. They are not interchangeable.

Ground support against ceiling rigging

Ground support is the default and it is usually the right answer. The cost is floor area: four base plates at the corners, each of them somewhere a visitor cannot stand and a counter cannot go. On a small stand that is a meaningful fraction of what you paid for by the square metre, so draw them onto the plan at actual size before you decide the layout is fine.

Ceiling rigging removes that problem and replaces it with a process. The suspension is ordered from the exhibition grounds, not from your builder, and it comes with a drawing showing every point, the load at each point, and a calculation signed by someone qualified to sign it. The deadline for submitting that package sits well before the general order deadlines — plan on it being one of the first things you do rather than one of the last.

The order in which a rigged stand happens

1. Design fixed, suspension identified. Somebody decides the sign hangs. This is the last cheap moment to change it.
2. Rigging drawing and load calculation submitted to the exhibition grounds against their published deadline, with point positions in millimetres from the stand corners.
3. Approval returned, sometimes with changes: a point moved because of a hall service run above it, or a load reduced.
4. Motors and points confirmed and priced. Charged per point, with the motor hire on top and often a minimum.
5. Rigging installed on the first build-up day, before anything else. Your own build cannot start under a rig that is not yet up.
6. Your stand builds underneath, which is why the delivery slot for your structure has to sit after the rigging call, not before it.
7. De-rig on the last night, usually after your stand has come down.

Step six is where schedules break. A stand delivery that arrives while the riggers are still working is a delivery that waits, and waiting at the exhibition grounds costs money in vehicle time and crew hours.

Lighting, and where it is usually wrong

Most stands are lit too evenly and too weakly. The package spotlights are sized for a small shell scheme and stay the same as the stand grows, which produces a flat grey box under a very high ceiling.

What works in a Frankfurt hall, where the ambient light is dim and slightly green:

• Wash the back wall. A lit wall is what people see from twenty metres down the aisle. Nothing else registers at that distance.
• Put real light on the product, from an angle, not from directly above. A narrow spot on the thing you came to show is worth more than three general fittings.
• Light faces where conversations happen. The seating area needs warm light at head height or everyone looks exhausted by Wednesday, which they are.
• Leave something dark. Contrast is what makes a stand read. A stand lit uniformly to the same level everywhere reads as a wall.
• Match the colour temperature across the stand. Mixed white light is the single most common fault, and it is free to avoid at the order stage.

LED fixtures have made the load calculation easier, but do not assume the power order can shrink to nothing. Screens, coolers and charging draw more than the lighting does on most modern stands. Order the sockets where the plan says, and order at least one more than the plan says.

What this costs you in planning terms

The honest summary: ceiling rigging is a decision made two to three months ahead, priced per point by the hall, and it removes flexibility from everything downstream. Ground support is a decision made weeks ahead, priced by the hire firm, and it costs you corners of floor.

For a first stand at the exhibition grounds, take ground support, spend the saved effort on lighting the back wall properly, and get the furniture and storage right. A well-lit stand with a hired counter and no sign in the air outperforms a badly-lit stand with a banner over it, every time, and it does not need a signature from a structural engineer in January for a fair in March.