Stage Designs

Ascending Coroplast

Tim Sherwood from Prairie Lakes Church in Cedar Falls, IA brings us these Coroplast light pillars.

They created 6 Coroplast pillars at various heights: 6′, 8′, and 10′. Inside the pillars they used Mac600’s for color. The pieces of Coroplast cost about 12.50 for each 4×8’sheet.

To add another element to the design they hung some paper lanterns varying in sizes and heights. They had the lanterns on hand from a previous design minus 4 smaller ones that cost $6 for the lanterns and $10 for the cords.

Then they added a couple 10′ section of truss and hung 1 Mac550 and 1 Mac250 on each piece of truss.

They are a multi-site church with 2 other campuses and they made the pillars for those as well.

Tetris Pieces Falling These 4 Words

19 responses to “Ascending Coroplast”

  1. Tim Sherwood says:

    Thanks for posting this Jonathan. I appreciate all you do.

  2. James says:

    This is a great look.

    You should look at spending $1200 on a set of 6 led pars so you can free up your Mac 600s

    • Tim Sherwood says:

      Yeah that would help a bit. Problem is we currently have a Hog 1k as our lighting board and it doesn’t run led’s our multi sites are using led’s though.

      • Brandon Vaughne says:

        This look is incredible. Where did you find the custom coroplast sheets?

        • Tim Sherwood says:

          Hey Brandon, thanks for the compliment.

          I purchased the coroplast from a local plastics dealer in my area. The sheets come in 4×8 so I had the company cut some down to 6′ and then I used the leftovers to make our 10′ tall pillars. I scored them to the same dimensions as the 4×8 sheets and simply used clear packaging tape to hold the 2 together. I then cut a lid and used some screws to attach it to the top of the pillars to hold some of the light in. I also cut a couple of 3 inch strips and attached them with screws into the back side of the pillars to help them hold there shape.

          Hope this helps

  3. Brandon Vaughne says:

    Absolutely. It helps a lot. I’m a part of a very young church with limited stage space and funds, so finding new ways to up our stage presence is always a great help. I appreciate the post.

  4. Pastor Luis says:

    so Im wondering what type of coroplast is this. to my knowledge it is what is called “natural” colored coroplast and the vendors up north dont know it by that description…any ideas?

    • Tim Sherwood says:

      Luis what I purchased was plain old white. Any sign shop in your area should carry this corrugated plastic. Coroplast is just a brand name. When I purchased mine I asked for white and white is what I got. The name of the Vendor here in Iowa has multiple branches in the midwest I believe. Regal Plastics was where I purchased ours.

      Hope this helps.

  5. Danny says:

    Don’t think LEDs would work with coroplast is you put the lights behind. LEDs’ light output is not enough to go through the coroplast. Well, that’s if you are using an LED light thats under $400 a piece.

  6. Doug Norton says:

    They look great !

    If I may ask, what size Coroplast did you use ? 4mm or 10mm ?

    and are the towers 3 or 4 sided, if 3 – why ?
    to disipate the heat ?

    Thank you for any help, we are still a “Portable Church” and these towers look great and seem to be very portable.

    • Tim Sherwood says:

      Hey Doug I used 4×8 10mm sheet. The way I scored them depended solely on the light that they were going around. At our main campus we are using Mac 600’s for our color wash and the 4×8 sheets would only wrap around on the sides had nothing to do with heat. At our other 2 campuses I was able to go around all 4 sides of our Elation opti tri pars and had a nice opening space on the back for all my cabling to go out of so the pillars would stay level.

      These are an excellent choice for a portable church campus. If you use some screws you can easily remove the top cover and back supports and fold them up compact to go on the trailers and reassemble them Sunday morning. Hope this helps out.

  7. Ryan Henson says:

    We are going to try and use this idea for a student ministry event. However, we have some pretty cheap par cans, would those shine through the coroplast or would we need something stronger?

  8. Eric Smith says:

    Hey guys – I’m late to this conversation but really appreciate the info!! I just built these light towers made with white (not clear/natural) coroplast – which I bought for $8.50 a sheet locally – and they look AMAZING. To answer one of the questions above – I use a much less expensive light to light them up with – the $99 LED by Venue (thinpar 64, which can be now found for as cheap as $75) and they look just as good as the pictures above! A GREAT way to give your stage setup some juice for not much money!

  9. Brad Dobson says:

    do you have any idea where I could get the clear cloroplast in NC. We are just north of Charlotte, NC

    • Tim Sherwood says:

      Being in Iowa Brad I cannot help you out there. I would call around to any of your local sign shops and see if they could sell something to you or point you in the right direction as to where to get it.

Leave a Reply to Eric Smith Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.