New York City, New York, USA

Rising 102 stories above the streets of Manhattan, the Empire State Building (ESB) is internationally recognized for its rich history, graceful Art Deco architecture, and elegant tower lights, which illuminate the top 30 stories with various color schemes to mark important anniversaries and events. Until recently, a team of electricians was required to change the colors of the high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting arrays positioned on the tower's 72nd and 81st floors. For each color change, this team would spend hours manually installing color disks on each fixture — a costly, high-maintenance procedure.

In 2012, building owner Anthony Malkin of Malkin Holdings, LLC, launched an initiative to modernize the tower by installing a more dynamic and energy-efficient lighting system. Philips Color Kinetics, the industry's premier LED lighting provider, was the clear choice for a partner in this immense project.

For the tower's mast and bands, the installation team replaced the existing fluorescent tube lighting with two adjacent columns of linear LED luminaires featuring RGB and tunable white nodes. The high-pressure sodium vapor floodlights that make up the tower's "halo," a ring of outward-facing circular lights above the mast resembling a string of pearls, were replaced with ColorBlast Powercore RGB LED floodlights used in a direct-view application.

The top 30 stories were formerly illuminated with rows of HID floodlights installed on rooftop setbacks wrapping around the 72nd and 81st floors. These lights were replaced with custom ColorReach Powercore floodlights featuring half RGB nodes and half 4000 K white-light nodes, allowing the tower to be washed in both saturated color and neutral white light. The sides of the 72nd floor were further retrofitted with both ColorGraze Powercore and iW Graze Powercore wall-grazing luminaires.

The project also brought to life the tower's fins, which had remained dark since a construction project removed their lighting system several years ago. These beautifully sculpted wings, positioned at the four corners of the mast, were illuminated with ColorReach Powercore floodlights.