Al Ula International Airport
Transport · Saudi Arabia
COMPLETED 2019
This is the first building most visitors to AlUla ever stand in, and it is built from the colours of the place — oxblood and rust overhead, sandstone and walnut at eye level. Dark ceilings are unforgiving to light: they absorb rather than bounce, so every lumen has to be placed deliberately and nothing can be recovered from a reflective surface. The scheme answers that with three distinct geometries — a hard mitred line in the lounge, a curved cove and a scattered point field in departures, and a ring of ingrounds outside — each chosen because of the shape it has to follow rather than the light it produces. Regents LED supplied the first class lounge, the departures hall and the entrance forecourt.
First Class Lounge
A Hard Line in a Dark Ceiling
The light line around this ceiling is made entirely of straight runs meeting at hard angles, and that rules tape out at the first hurdle. RL-LIN-REC is a rigid recessed linear that butts together seamlessly and mitres cleanly, which is what holds an edge crisp enough to survive being drawn across a dark, matt, non-reflective surface — a flexible strip in a slot would soften every corner and the whole geometry would go slack. Lengths are made to suit rather than divided into standard bays, so no joint lands mid-run. RL-DL3333 gives the seating its light: a deep cup with the source recessed 75 to 100mm behind a 20°, 40° or 60° optic, because a guest in a lounge is reclining with their eyes higher than usual and a shallow fitting would be directly in view. RL-DL3332 handles the framed work along both walls, adjustable and available at 15° or 24° so each piece is lit to its own frame rather than the wall around it. RL-ST1226 is concealed in the buffet and bar joinery, on a 10mm board that fits a counter reveal.
Departures Hall
A Curve, and a Field of Points
The departures ceiling does the opposite of the lounge: it runs as a continuous serpentine, wide curves in plan with no straight segment anywhere along the edge. RL-ST1330 is the answer for exactly the reason the lounge needed a rigid fitting — it is flexible tape, so it bends into the cove and the glow follows the curve without a single break. At 24V it also holds an even brightness across a run measured in tens of metres, which a 12V board would not. The dark ceiling beyond the cove is where the second decision sits: a scattered field of small apertures rather than a regular grid of large ones. RL-DL1599 suits it because Ø55 is small enough that a hundred of them read as a constellation rather than a service layout, and at 45mm deep it fits a shallow void; the beam options let alternate fittings be aimed differently so the scatter has depth. RL-RECWW-01 grazes the deep red wall behind the desks — a recessed washer at IP67 in 200mm to 1000mm lengths with DALI or DMX512, so the wall can hold its own level independently of the concourse.
Entrance Plaza
Everything Aimed Upward
The forecourt sculpture is lit entirely from the paving, which is the hardest way to light anything: there is no ceiling to bounce off, the fittings are walked over, and every beam that misses the object disappears into the desert sky. The ring is therefore built from two fittings doing two jobs. RL-IG1815 is the long throw — 30W or 40W delivering 3000 to 4000 lumens at 24°, set back from the base so the beam still has enough energy left to reach the top of the canopy and separate it from the night. RL-IG1812 sits closer in at 12W or 20W, and the important difference is that its head is adjustable: the fittings nearest the base can be aimed individually to graze the stone rather than flood it, which is what keeps the modelling on the face readable instead of flattening it. Both are 304 stainless steel with an aluminium body and glass, on an anti-corrosion, UV-stable powder coat, rated IP65 with a 5-year warranty — and both should be installed on a drained pot, because an inground fitting in a desert climate fails from the water that sits in it after a storm rather than from the heat.
Project specification
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Lighting a building with nothing to bounce off?
This project sits alongside Regents LED's wider portfolio of large-scale transport, architectural and hospitality lighting across the Gulf region, Europe and Asia.
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