How to Light an Office Holiday Party

Can This Fit Into an Office?

Yes, and the answer is decided by your freight elevator.

For a holiday party on the twelfth floor of a building on West 34th Street the order was eight lit cocktail tables, two lit bars and thirty-two bar stools. What made it work was that two of the bars and one of the tables were specified as collapsible units, purely so they would make the lift. The other seven tables went up rigid because they fitted.

That is a spec decision, not a compromise, and it only gets made if somebody asks about the elevator before the order is placed. Measure the freight car, including the diagonal, and tell your rental company the number.

What Works for a Standing Party?

Cocktail tables and a bar. Often no dance floor at all.

Most office parties are standing events where people circulate for two hours, and the thing they need is somewhere to put a drink. Ten lit cocktail tables scattered through a floor does more for the atmosphere than a dance floor that four people use at the end. We have supplied exactly that repeatedly to a residential tower on West 42nd Street, ten tables and sometimes a single 6ft bar, and it works because it matches how the evening actually behaves.

If there is dancing, it usually starts late and involves a fraction of the room. Size for that rather than for the headcount. Our sizing guide covers the arithmetic, but a corporate crowd is at the low end of it.

One honest note on color. Cocktail tables and bars run battery lighting, which does effects rather than precise shades, so if you need an exact brand color the dance floor is the piece that can hold it. We cover why in our guide to color matching.

What Will the Building Demand?

More than the venue would, and earlier.

At Cipriani on Broadway the certificates of insurance had to be physically in hand at the service entrance before the crew could get in, and the freight elevator was shared with arriving guests, which changes how long a load-in takes. At the West 42nd Street tower the building required a hard 5pm arrival, not a window. Neither is unusual for a managed building and neither is flexible.

In an office tower the freight elevator has more say over your party than your budget does.

Ask your facilities manager three questions early. What insurance do they need and in whose name. What is the load-in entrance and what hours does it operate. And is there a fixed arrival time or a window. Pass those three answers to your rental company and most of the risk disappears.

What if the Space Is Not an Event Venue?

Usually fine, and often better looking than a function room.

We have built a runway on the fifth floor of a WeWork on West Broadway, put thirty-eight riser units into a converted warehouse at Industry City in Brooklyn, and installed a 20x20 floor inside the Mall at Bay Plaza in the Bronx for a Halloween event, where the whole install had to be timed around public foot traffic rather than a normal load-in window.

Odd spaces are rarely a problem for the equipment. They are a scheduling problem, and scheduling problems are solvable with notice.

We deliver, install and break down across the tri-state area, from Manhattan and Brooklyn to Long Island, across New Jersey and up through Connecticut.