Council & Public Events · Noosa Shire

Working With Noosa Shire Council

The Noosa Eat & Drink Festival is a four-day celebration of local restaurants, regional produce, and culinary community. Noosa Shire Council needed lighting that made food look delicious, created a festival atmosphere, and extended the festival's energy past dusk without feeling overlit or artificial. We designed a two-zone approach. The main festival street (Hastings Street) got warm 2700K ambient festoon lighting strung overhead, creating a village-fair atmosphere and visual enclosure. Secondary restaurants and market stalls got customised accent lighting designed specifically to make food and produce look vibrant and appetising without harsh colour temperature or glare. The kitchen areas of participating restaurants got task lighting rigged on individual poles—enough for chefs to see their work safely, but warm-toned so plating and food prep looked professional rather than clinical. We also designed a secondary lighting zone for the festival's evening stage and bar areas, with dynamic colour capability (but locked to warm, non-jarring colour temperatures) so those social gathering spaces could feel celebratory without overwhelming the food-centric atmosphere of the festival. By December 2025, the festival ran until 10 PM each night (previously 7 PM), and participating restaurants reported 45% higher foot traffic during the evening hours. Food sales increased dramatically, which told us the lighting design was doing its job: making food and gathering spaces feel inviting enough that people stayed longer. Noosa Shire Council booked us to design the 2026 festival lighting upfront—a twelve-month heads-up. That's the outcome: lighting that demonstrably increases revenue and extends the utility of the event, which means councils and vendors will reprioritise budgets to keep it in place.