Title 24 Requirements for Theaters and Cinemas
A theater is the building type where much of the lighting can sit outside the power calculation. Performance lighting is excluded under Section 140.6(a)3, but only when it is a separate system on its own control station, and that condition is what the design has to get right.
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Performance lighting is excluded, on conditions
Lighting for theatrical and other live performances may be left out of the adjusted indoor lighting power, provided it is in addition to a general lighting system and separately controlled by a multi-scene or theatrical cross-fade control station accessible only to authorised operators. The house lights are general lighting and are counted. The rig is not — if it is genuinely separate.
That makes it a wiring and controls question rather than a fittings one. Performance circuits switched from the same point as the house lights do not meet the condition, and their watts come back into the calculation.
Dressing rooms have their own version
Makeup, hair and costume lighting in performing arts dressing rooms is excluded on three conditions: it is switched separately from the general lighting, switched independently at each dressing station, and controlled by a vacancy sensor. A mirror strip on the room switch does not qualify.
A cinema and a playhouse are different categories
Table 140.6-C splits theater areas into motion picture and performance, defined by what the rows of seats face — films in one; plays, lectures and concerts in the other — and gives each its own allowance. Auditorium areas, with a stage and fixed seats, and audience seating areas are categories again. A multiplex and a playhouse of the same size are not the same calculation.
Two systems in one auditorium
An area may have at most two lighting systems, and two must be interlocked. In an auditorium, conference room, multipurpose room or theater the lower-wattage system can then be excluded, but only with a nonprogrammable double-throw switch preventing both from running together and an installation certificate to show it.
Seats set the ventilation
With fixed seating, the occupant count used for outdoor air comes from the California Building Code rather than a density assumption, and the ventilation table lists auditorium seating at 71 people per 1,000 square feet. Density of that order makes demand control ventilation mandatory wherever the system has an economizer, modulating outdoor air control or more than 3,000 cfm of design outdoor air. The stage rate excludes special exhaust for effects such as dry ice vapour and smoke, which is designed on its own.
Where to go deeper
The house lighting is still held to the lighting power allowance, so the exclusion only helps when the general system stands on its own. A lit marquee, or an illuminated sign in the lobby, is sign lighting — the Compliance Manual confirms that applies indoors too.