Gaming cafe lighting that looks good on stream, without glare on the screens

Players choose a gaming cafe by how it looks on camera. The photographs on social media and the background of a stream are what fill the seats, and both are produced by lighting. The difficulty is that the same room is full of monitors, and any light that shows on the glass is a light the player will complain about. This guide explains how the two goals are reconciled.

Rule one: nothing in the screen plane

A monitor reflects whatever sits in front of it at the mirror angle. Direct light sources in that zone, such as downlights above the desk or a bright wall module directly behind the player’s head, show on the glass. Everything decorative in a gaming cafe is therefore placed either below the screen plane, well above it, or behind the player and diffused.

The practical result is that gaming cafe lighting is mostly indirect: flat illuminated panels on desk fronts and booth dividers, panels on the wall behind the desks, and a glow under the desk. These show up in a photograph of the room and stay out of the monitor.

One signature feature

A room of indirect panels is pleasant but anonymous. Every cafe that is recognized on stream has one signature feature: a stage backdrop built from an angular combination set, a petal or hexagon ceiling piece above the main area, or a feature wall by the entrance. This is the piece that appears in every photograph, and it is where the team colors and the logo belong.

The feature is placed where the cameras point, not where the players look. For a stream, that means behind the players’ backs, in the field of the webcam.

Zones, controllers, and scenes

Booths, the stage, the corridor, and the reception are wired to separate controllers. Each zone has its own preset scenes, and the scenes are programmed during commissioning:

• Regular hours: calm colors, panels at moderate brightness, the feature piece on a slow change.
• Streaming: the feature wall at full brightness in the team colors, desk panels a little dimmer so faces are not underlit.
• Tournament: the stage backdrop dominant, the rest of the room lowered.

Switching between them should be one button on the controller, so staff use them.

Corridors and columns

Corridors between booth blocks are lit with saucer or linear modules along the ceiling, so the route to the counter is obvious. Structural columns, wrapped in vertical linear light, stop reading as obstacles and start reading as part of the design. Both are secondary to the desk panels and the feature piece, and both should use the same family of colors.

How are team colors and logos matched?

RGB modules display any color and store scenes, so team colors are a matter of programming. Logos and team graphics can be printed on the module surface, and infinity mirror pieces place the artwork inside the mirror tunnel. Modules themselves are standard products in fixed sizes; the printing is the customization.

See the gaming cafe and esports solutions page for recommended products, and the desk lighting and wall decoration pages for the panels and sets described here.