Band Lighting Gels - Best Filter Colours To Light Your Gig

October 10th - Band Lighting - by Rob

Thinking about lighting for your band, you think colour. A few really cheap PAR cans with coloured gels in them can transform the mood of your stage. Stage lighting filters are available in hundreds of different gel colours so On Stage Lighting did an unscientific straw poll of some stage lighting designers to find out their best filter colours for lighting a small band gig - to help you choose your own.



There are several different manufacturers of lighting gels but Lee Filters in Europe and Rosco in the USA, are the most popular. Because we spoke to a number of LD’s in the UK, their favourite band lighting gel numbers were mostly in Lee Filters numbers, which are traditional in the UK. We have added Rosco Supergel/Roscolux similar equivalent numbers (R##) and many of the stage lighting filter manufacturers have been starting to align their colour index to match up with their competitors. A good expample of this is the Rosco E-colour range, which matches the traditional Lee lighting gels while the Lee 0## gels are similar colours to the traditional Rosco Supergel filters.

red, green, blue PAR lights
Image by Herkie

The filters are chosen to give you maximum impact while maintaining a fairly good light output, so the gels are all strong colours that are the backbone of stage lighting for a band gig.

Red Lighting Gels

No band gig is complete without some red lighting and these gel colours are the best reds in the live music business:

  • Lee 106 Primary Red (R026): The original red lighting gel, this gives a warm fiery red light.
  • Lee 027 Medium Red (R027): A good all purpose red gel that does what it says on the tin.
  • Lee 046 Dark Magenta (R046): A really deep red gel that is much less hot or orange than previous filters.

Amber/Orange/Yellow Lighting Gels

A warm amber gel is great for those upbeat cheerful songs and give a bit of sunlight amongst all those moody blues and lavenders:

  • Lee 105 Orange (R15): This gel is actually a really nice rich yellow colour that is warm and not too green.
  • Lee 134 Golden Amber (R321): The traditional amber for band lighting. Slightly more orange than L105.
  • Lee 777 Rust (R2002): A deep brownish orange gel that is great if you don’t want your colour too yellow.

Blue Lighting Gels

From moody Jazz gigs to huge boy-band spectaculars, blue is the biggest thing there is in band stage lighting design. Blue gels always look great. It can be worth putting “doubling up” (using twice as many blue stage lights as other colours) your blue lights as the light output for a really good rock ‘n’ roll blue is less than other filters:

  • Lee 079 Just Blue (R079): A vibrant blue that is not too green and not too purple. It also has a high-ish light output.
  • Lee 721 Berry Blue (R074): A deepish moody blue gel that can produce both warm and cold blue light.
  • Lee 120 Deep Blue (R384): A really deep dark blue that still has a decent light output. Lee 119 is slightly lighter.
  • Lee 181 Congo Blue (R382): No band stage lighting is complete without Congo Blue. Dark and moody purple/blue that is sometimes incorrectly called UV or Ultra Violet. A fantastic lighting gel though you don’t get much light through it.

Lavender/Purple/Pink Lighting Gels

The ability to look warm or cold gives lavender a useful place in band stage lighting. You can’t be without some of these lighting gels. Pink lighting doesn’t have to be too camp or Burleque. A good deep pink can go with blues or ambers (or green, if you like the halloween look):

  • Lee 180 Dark Lavendar (R337): Dark enough to be worth using while still give a decent amount of purple light.
  • Lee 142 Pale Violet (R355): A light violet/lavender gel that has a good light output and a bit of useful colour.
  • Lee 126 Mauve (R04): Proper band lighting deep pink for rock ‘n’roll.
  • Lee 328 Follies Pink (R344): Camp and Broadway-ish for all you disco queens. Also Lee 128 Bright Pink.

Green Lighting Gels

The least used colour gel in band stage lighting is green. It makes the band look ill and make the audience feel pretty sick. Most of our lighting designers would not actually choose any green gels, but we have picked a couple of green filter colours anyway:

  • Lee 116 Medium Blue/Green (R095): This sea green/blue was pretty much as green as we could stand. Good for metalwork and drumkits.
  • Lee 124 Dark Green (R??): A space age metallicky green that would be OK on sets or backdrops.
  • Lee 089 Moss Green (R089): A warm dark yellowy green has a organic, nature feel about it. Not sure how useful that is for band lighting, though.

White Band Lighting Colours

The light you get from a normal PAR Can without a gel is pretty yellow. The big live music gigs get their really bright cold light out of a different kind of stage lighting bulb that is fitted to their expensive moving lights. This sort cold while light is pretty tricky to achieve with normal lighting gel but you can try Lee 201 Full CTB or Lee 201 Half CTB to make you stage light light seem colders. Any kind of very light blue filter will make the yellow light of a tungsten PAR bulb less warm.

If you would like to add your favourite band lighting gels to this article, please leave us a comment below and let our readers know your best filters a simple music gig.

Related Articles:



Learn Stage Lighting


4 Responses to “Band Lighting Gels - Best Filter Colours To Light Your Gig”

  1. Duncan (engineer) Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 2:28 am

    sound advice plainly stated that confirms my own rather inexperienced coomonsense lighting experiments at live gigs, but takes me a little further. Many thanks!

  2. Rob Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Hi Duncan. Hope to bring you some more advanced lighting articles in the future. But what with gigs etc… You know how it is!

  3. jeremy guest-smith Says:
    December 15th, 2007 at 8:32 am

    nice to see you DIDNT include 132 in the Blue section, I’m working on eradicating that colour in my world!

  4. Rob Says:
    December 15th, 2007 at 8:45 am

    Hi Jeremy,

    Lee 132 didn’t quite make it into the top group of blue gels. My own opinion is that it is too green, particularly at lower intensities, with all that tungsten yellow from a PAR lamp.

    Light transmission is good if you only have 300w PAR56s but L119 is similar to L120 with a better output.

    Glad to hear you are working to rid the world of L132 (I am trying a similar campaign to never use L106 - Isn’t that lighting heresy??)

Leave your comment about this...

On Stage Lighting would love to hear your views or relevant stage lighting questions.

Please Check that you are adding your comment to the most relevant article - it helps other readers.