Cheerleaders leading a cheer at a high school glow pep rally.
A glow pep rally is a great way to boost school spirit for homecoming, football and basketball games. Using blacklights for a pep rally is an inexpensive way to transform an entire school gym, football field or cafeteria into an entirely different and cool space. Most of the decorations (neon clothes) and glow items are brought in by the students on the day of the event so a glow pep rally can be very cost effective.
Most single, full court school gyms are at least 120ft long x 60ft wide with 16ft – 24ft high ceilings. That is a large amount of space to fill with glow light so you need to get lights that are designed to fill the entire gym with blacklight.
Types of Blacklights
Short Throw: These blacklights are designed to throw the light a short distance. Perfect for living rooms, bedrooms, these lights are designed to be cheap and fill a small space with blacklight. These lights may look like fluorescent overhead lights or lights that fit into a standard lamp socket. These lights will not help you light your gym.
Long Throw: Designed to throw blacklight a long distance and cover a huge amount of space with blacklight, long throw lights are designed to bathe and saturate large spaces with blacklight. These lights are expensive and come in a variety of configurations. For a high school pep rally you want to go with a LED based long throw light fixture. These lights are durable, stay cool, easy to use, and provide some visible purple light which is what you want for a pep rally.
We rent the highest powered, lowest cost per watt, long throw, LED blacklights available designed for glow pep rallies.
High school glow pep rally with students and glow sticks getting ready for homecoming.
How Many Lights Do We Need?
The way your pep rally is configured and how many students you’ll have will tell us how many lights you need. Not all blacklights are created equal, we’ve calculated all of the numbers below specifically using our high power blacklight rental lights.
Here are a few sample configurations that are the most common.
1. Students on both sides of the basketball court sitting in the bleachers: You’ll need at least 4 blacklights put in each of the corners of the gym aiming across the gym to the other side. If you have a lot of activity in the middle of the court or have more than 800 students we suggest putting an extra one to two lights at the ends aiming towards the middle. (4-6 blacklights)
2. Students on one side of the basketball court sitting in the bleachers: You’ll need at least 2 blacklights for under 300 students, 3 blacklights for 600 students, 4 blacklights for 1000 students, 6 blacklights for 1500 students. We’d also suggest for large areas of the basketball court an additional one or two blacklights to light up the performers. (2-6 blacklights)
3. Half size gyms, smaller gyms and spaces: Generally you want at least 2 blacklights to light up a smaller gym space in opposite corners facing where you want backlight. Generally we recommend an additional blacklight to light up the court area where performers are as well. (2-3 blacklights)
4. Football field pep rally: For football fields think about how many people you will have and how much space they will fill. A blacklight generally will cover a 60ft x 60ft area. If you have people in the stands half the space of a football field (50yds = 150ft) centered on the 50 yd line going up in the stands 80ft you’d need 5-6 lights to cover the stands and an additional 2 blacklights to cover performers on the track / field. If you have performers covering more of the field you’d need more blacklights to cover them. For best results you’ll want to be able to turn off the field lights. (5-10 blacklights)
Blacklights enhance glow bracelets and any other item that is blacklight responsive.
Glow Items for Blacklight Pep Rally
There are a lot of various glow items that are perfect for a glow pep rally. Some items that are the most popular are:
Glow Tape: Fluorescent gaffers tape is an excellent and inexpensive way to outline times in the gym or create designs with tape that will glow with blacklight. It comes off easily, is safe for painted surfaces, and won’t leave sticky residue.
Glow Balloons: Using standard helium with glow balloons is an easy way to create displays and pops of fluorescent color in the stands.
Glow Makeup: Glow makeup is easy to apply and comes in mascara, lipstick, eyeliner, nail polish and will illuminate performers and cheerleaders really well.
Fluorescent Clothes: T-Shirts, hats, socks, gloves, glasses, shoes, can all look amazing on students. White shirts work really well too and can be drawn on with regular highlighters.
Glow Necklaces and Sticks: Glow necklaces and glow sticks that glow on their own are amplified to glow even more with blacklight. They work really well together.
Throw a Glow Pep Rally
Throwing a glow pep rally is easy and all you need to do is rent the blacklights. Check availability and throw a glow pep rally for your school!
