December 10, 2025
Lighting People Join the Cast at LDI 2025
From designers to reps, everyone’s chasing dynamic lighting experiences
From Sunday to Tuesday, the Las Vegas Convention Center floor went dark. Not because of a blackout, but by design. Fog machines hissed, LED spotlights sliced through the haze, and subwoofers pulsed with a rhythmic thump that registered somewhere between your chest and your liver. This is not your standard exposition — this is LDI Show 2025, where silence is suspicious and the only thing static is the truss.
Unlike LightFair seven months earlier, which inspired chatter in the same convention center for its surprising dim-out approach in the name of showcasing architectural fixtures, LDI’s theatrical darkness is a decades-old feature. In this world, darkness doesn’t obscure — it reveals.
LDI, once known as Live Design International, began as a niche gathering for the theater and live event crowd. Now owned by Questex, the event has expanded both in scope and scale. The 2025 edition drew over 325 exhibitors and more than 14,000 attendees, surpassing pre-pandemic benchmarks and reflecting a slight increase compared to last year's event.
The attendee list is diverse. From dealers and theatrical designers to AV integrators, reps, consultants, and live event professionals, LDI is increasingly becoming a collision point for disciplines once siloed. The noise might be literal, but the signal is clear: live design is bleeding into everything.
From Theatrical to Commercial: Lines Blur
If you’re tracking who’s on the floor, it’s not just the usual theatrical suspects. ETC, Martin, Chauvet Professional, Elation, Clay Paky — stalwarts of the stage and screen — drew crowds and stayed busy. Their products, once mainly destined for stages and touring rigs, are now finding homes in themed entertainment, high-end hospitality, and commercial installs. ETC’s booth, in particular, looked like it had its own BPM — it pulsed with synchronized lighting and synchronized attendees.
But this year, it wasn’t just the stage players. Diode LED and Times Square Lighting, often associated with commercial and architectural work, showed up with solutions built for more dynamic environments. “We are the flexible lighting solution for everything Scenic,” said JB Lowe, Diode LED’s marketing lead. “From experiential to film and television and broadcast… this is where the convergence is happening.”
That convergence includes high-end residential. Lighting designer Matthew Tirschwell drove in from his Los Angeles office and stopped by LDI Show before meeting with a Vegas architect. He explained, “More of my clients are asking for lighting that’s distinctive, even somewhat theatrical. That’s why I came to LDI … to find ideas you won’t see in a typical architectural product line.”
The Agent Game: Lighting Reps Go Wide
Lighting agents weren’t just wandering the floor — they were working it. SESCO Lighting, boasts an expanding multi-state partnership with ETC. We bumped into Rhonda Viveney from SESCO, who confirmed their newest territory partnership: San Antonio.
Then there’s QLS in Upstate New York, whose somewhat recent acquisition of Ferrini-Konarski brought in a fleet of theatrical brands. Repco II from Pittsburgh and The Dulanski Group from New York were in attendance to shore up manufacturer relationships. Specialty reps Boston Illumination Group, and AKT3 out of the Washington D.C. market were also present, each with distinct line cards deeply focused on theatrical lighting and controls.
Vari-Lite’s Strategic Realignment — and Bell & McCoy’s Big Bet
In one of the more consequential shake-ups, Bell & McCoy revealed a new territory-wide partnership with Vari-Lite, a Signify brand historically linked with Genlyte Solutions agents. The move signals a broader pivot: Vari-Lite is carving out an independent path across more U.S. regions. And Bell & McCoy is making it count.
Rob Duncan and Jason Shaver of Bell & McCoy detailed the investment: five new positions focused solely on entertainment lighting. The titles? “Entertainment Lighting Regional Specialist.” From middle school auditoriums to high-profile venues, the agency, also known in parts as FRM, sees this as a long-game expansion. And given their longstanding partnerships with control brands like Lutron in many territories, the move suggests a vision where theatrical and commercial systems don’t compete — they integrate.
Booth Buzz
LDI’s exhibit hall doesn’t whisper innovation — it shouts. Booths from ETC, Elation, Martin Professional, Chauvet Professional, and Clay Paky consistently pulled in the crowds. ETC’s booth was jumping with attendees for three days straight.
“Architainment” is a term that makes some lighting people wince — but the trend is real. Dynamic lighting once exclusive to concert theatrical applications is now showing up in casinos, campuses, immersive retail, and even corporate lobbies. DMX512, once an industry-specific protocol, is now a common specification in commercial lighting projects.
From media walls to kinetic light art, the integration of theatrical tech into architectural contexts isn’t fringe — it’s mainstreaming. Lighting people on both sides of the aisle are adapting.
Beyond the Booths: More Than a Trade Show
But LDI isn’t just a place to gawk at moving heads or grab swag. It’s also a rigorous professional development environment. This year’s event featured LDInstitute intensives, XLIVE concert touring sessions, VJ challenges, career fairs, and after-hours events that blurred the line between networking and nightlife.
The 2026 edition will run from December 2–8, again in Las Vegas. If the floor is any indication, the crossover between theatrical and commercial is only accelerating — and LDI is where the blueprints get rewritten.
