When your company is headquartered in Las Vegas, the City of Lights, it goes without saying that your building better be well lit or it will get lost in the sea of surrounding lights.

Although financial services companies aren’t often known for their bright lights, Credit One Bank wanted to take advantage of its highly visible location along the Las Vegas Beltway and make sure it stood out from the many other buildings in the area.

Sitting on 26 acres, the Credit One Bank building was the first true concrete tilt-up office building in Southern Nevada. Its largely glass exterior and open floor plan were designed to promote visibility and accessibility with formal and informal meeting spaces, active circulation areas that encourage employee interactions, and inviting communal/gathering spaces.

Credit One Bank was founded in 1984 as a full-service financial institution. As one of the fastest-growing credit card issuers in the U.S., it is an official partner of the Las Vegas Raiders and the Official Credit Card of NASCAR, WWE, the Vegas Golden Knights, and Best Friends Animal Society.

Standing out in a city that has more than 12 million lights on its Strip alone (according to UK-based Smart Lighting Industries) is no easy task. Credit One Bank did so by using not just a large quantity of linear horizontal lights that lined the outside of the building but also a distinctive color.

Embracing the Blues

In the U.S., blue is the most commonly used color by financial institutions for their logos and corporate identifies because it conveys professionalism and trustworthiness. But the blue lights spotlighting Credit One Bank’s 153,000-square-foot, four-story headquarters is no ordinary blue. They can only be described as bluer than blue with an intensity that can be seen from miles away.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that the building has been spotlighted in blue. The blue lighting scheme has been a Credit One Bank tradition since it moved from San Rafael, California, to Vegas in 1998. The original lighting was from Tivoli Lighting, based in Irvine, who was one of the first companies to offer a bendable LED Neon replacement solution. The lighting product, Flex Direct™ was a flexible PCB with SMD mounted LEDs for reliability and uniformity of light. It was used across America for outlining structures, feature delineation and other applications where traditional glass neon used to be utilized.

Recently, Credit One Bank added a second building on its headquarters campus with a desire to maintain the bank’s hallmark blue. Bank management reached out to Alive Enterprises, a Vegas-based lighting design consultant, to discuss options for an upgrade.

“The Bank really loved the blue from its original linear lighting, so we needed to match it,” said David Alayev, president of Alive Enterprises. “With new technology on the market, we were able to investigate solutions that were the next iteration of the original light technology, such as new SMD LED and PCB technology. This led us to TRACE Vertical from Tivoli Lighting.”

From its heritage from Flex Direct, TRACE Vertical is a linear LED system for straight or curved interior or exterior applications. It is designed to replace neon for outlining structures or applications, providing direct and indirect continuous illumination. IP-rated for wet locations, TRACE vertical is constructed using flexible SMD LEDs with zero voltage drop for reliability and uniformity of light. Its UV-stabilized silicone housing will not yellow or crack.

Installation went smoothly to help keep the project on schedule because TRACE Vertical is easy to install. Among other special features, the product offers tight cutting increments for precise field application on the exterior of the building contours. More than 1,800 feet on building one and another 1,000 feet on building two were installed.

“Most important for this project was that the new blue Tivoli lights produce 120 lumens per foot and a brighter and vibrant color which makes the building impossible to miss,” said Alayev. “The hue on the blue is truly fantastic. It is a true blue versus other blues which look much lighter, greener without any visible hot spots. The lighting makes the Credit One Bank building very hard to miss at night, even in the Las Vegas community.”

Participants

Alive Enterprises/ALSCO-LV Representative

Tivoli Lighting Manufacturer

Graybar Distributor

Burke General Contractor

Feature Image Courtesy of Credit One Bank