Located in London, ROWBOTS’ is a successful fitness centre start-up co-founded by professional Welsh footballer, Gareth Bale. Its boutique studios are centrally located in the City and Fitzrovia offering specialist fitness classes with a primary focus on rowing, utilising state-of-the-art rowers and floor workouts.

Leading architectural hybrid lighting company, Optelma, worked alongside internationally acclaimed architectural lighting design practice, Nulty and well-respected design studio, Sarah Mannerings Studio. Nulty specified Optelma’s products to enhance Sarah Mannerings interior design scheme for the rowing machine lights and changing rooms to achieve raw and innovative lighting within ROWBOTS’ City and Fitzrovia studios.

Optelma’s custom disc lights were imaginatively installed for each rowing machine. Providing an LED colour changing glow into the water tank, whilst making use of Casambi’s smart lighting control to enable the water tank to change colour dependent on the pace and mood of the workout, the rowing machines can light up in a way that is more commonly associated with lighting you might find in a spin studio. Blue light is often used during warm-up and cool-down periods, while amber light is used during an intense workout.

Complementing the main studio lighting, the custom lighting for the rowers is comprised of laser cut acrylic discs with etched logos and an onboard rechargeable power pack so no wires run from each machine, whilst at the same time providing enough power to last all day.

In the changing rooms, Nulty’s lighting scheme incorporated graphic lines of light have been used to create moments of drama, highlighting the ceiling and mirrors whilst forward-facing vertical lines of diffused light accentuate the corners of each shower cubicle. Optelma’s continuous SM linear Quad 46 profile was specified to follow the shape of the changing room. It is fully customisable which enabled it to accommodate and work around services located on the ceiling. In addition, Philips Fortimo internals with fixed output drivers and an opal diffuser were added to deliver a high output, while maximising efficiency.

Graham Watkinson, Managing Director of Optelma commented: “ROWBOTS’ boutique fitness centres in Fitzrovia and the City offer state-of-the-art equipment with an outstanding level of service. It was fantastic to work alongside Nulty to create the bold and striking lighting to befitting of each gyms distinctive design.”

Sarah Mannerings, Founder of Sarah Mannerings Studio added: “I’ve worked alongside Nulty for many years, and they have always created highly innovative light schemes to bring to life my interior design concepts.  ROWBOTS has been no exception.  The lighting that they specified from Optelma has perfectly achieved the pace and energy that I envisaged when forming the brand and interior design and I couldn’t be happier with the end result at both sites.”

Project credits:
Lighting Design: Nulty
Interior Design: Sarah Mannerings Studio