Wired vs Wireless Dance Floors

We look at the pros and cons of wired vs wireless starlit dance floors

Starlit dance floors have been used in the wedding market since the late 2000’s and Premier were one of the first companies to offer this service to our clients. With one of the largest stocks of starlit dance floor in the UK we feel that we know the market exceptionally well.

In 2009 when we first started to invest in starlit dance floors the wireless system was the most widely used. With the wireless system, power would be provided to the first row of panels via a powered edge and then each panel would transfer the power to the next using a system of copper connectors attached to the side of each panel.

From the first wedding using the wireless starlit dance floor, we had issues with the wireless system. Many of these issues were not catastrophic, but certainly not the level of service that we wanted to be providing to our clients as a premium wedding supplier.

From the client’s point of view, they will have noticed the odd panel would stop working during their wedding. On a number of occasions the whole floor would turn off, as the powered edging would come away from the dance floor as it was being danced on causing it to switch off.

If you look at other suppliers of starlit dance floors you may notice that even on their promotional pictures there are starlit dance floor panels that are not twinkling.

Marquees were also a problem with the wireless system, it relied on the surface being flat, and in temporary marquees this is typically not the case. Towards the end of our time with the wireless system we simply turned down work in marquees, as we knew that the system was not designed to withstand the nature of them.

We spent many many hours maintaining the wireless starlit dance floors, changing the copper connectors in house and sending back panels to be repaired, but in 2014 we had enough and made the change.

We knew from day 1 that there was an alternative to the wireless dance floor, a wired system, with all of the problems that we were facing with the wireless system we looked into this wired system further. We went to visit the factory that manufactured the wired system to see if their wired solution would offer us any advantages and were impressed with what we saw.

After some very long deliberations between the senior management team at Premier it was decided that we would make the transition over to the wired system. The advantages to our bride and grooms were too hard to ignore.

The wired system works, as you would expect, using cables. There is a physical link between the controller and each panel. Now the downside to this is that it takes our event crew longer on site to lay each dance floor, about 10 minutes extra for a 16ft x 16ft floor. The advantages however have been substantial.

The wired system is supplied with a controller, which gave us much more flexibility with the settings that we could offer to our clients. The wireless system had 6 speeds to choose from, but relied on a receiver in each panel to pick up the signal from a hand held controller. These failed at a high rate and so for many years we did not offer any other option to our clients other than a standard twinkle. We are now able to offer our brides and grooms a number of speed options as well as well as dimming.

By using the wired system we can lay the dance floors on uneven surfaces and be confident that each panel and the whole floor will work all night. We no longer get the phone calls from the client at 9pm on a Saturday demanding to know why the dance floor has stopped working.

Switching to the wired dance floor system is one of the biggest investments on a single product that we have made to date at Premier. It has absolutely been the correct decision to make however. We are called Premier for a reason; we offer our clients a premium level of service backed up with premium products.

Since offering the wired dance floor to our clients we have not had any issues with the floor turning off or panels not working during our clients wedding breakfasts and receptions.

As a bride and groom you may find that companies such as Premier charge more for their starlit dance floor hire. This is simply because it’s a better product and also costs more to purchase than the cheaper wireless system.

If you have any questions about any of the above or would like to enquire about booking a wired starlit dance floor for your event don’t hesitate to get in touch by phone, email or the chat feature below.