SF City Hall Lights Up for MLK Day

San Francisco’s City Hall celebrates Martin Luther King’s Day by illuminating its 220+ state-of-the-art LED lighting fixtures in red, green & black.

It’s a great photo opportunity to capture San Francisco’s iconic dome lit up for the occasion.

The schedule is always tentative for the holiday lighting and subject to change when there are special events and the building is lit in honor of those.

January’s Lighting Events

1/1                Gold – Happy New Year!
1/4                Purple – Honoring our Hospitality industry
1/5                Gold – Honoring Frontline workers
1/6                Blue – Honoring Healthcare workers
1/7                Red/white/blue – Honoring 1st Responders
1/9                Reds/Orange  – Inaugural nonstop Air India service from SFO to our Sister City, Bangalore, India.
1/11              Purple – Honoring our Hospitality industry
1/12              Gold – Honoring Frontline workers
1/13              Blue – Honoring Healthcare workers
1/14              Red/white/blue – Honoring 1st Responders
1/18              Red/green/black – MLK Day
1/19              Gold – Memorializing American Lives lost to COVID
1/20              Red/white/blue – Inauguration of the 46th President of the US
1/21              Red/white/blue – Honoring 1st Responders
1/25              Purple – Honoring our Hospitality industry
1/26              Gold – Honoring Frontline workers
1/27              Blue – Honoring Healthcare workers
1/28              Red/white/blue – Honoring 1st Responders

About City Hall’s Exterior Lighting

Every evening at sunset, over 220 state-of-the-art LED lighting fixtures illuminate City Hall’s exterior. Normally, a soft white glow shows off the play of light and shadow on the full façade and dome. Frequently, special plaza façade lighting schemes honor or celebrate events, seasons, and holidays.

Until 2016, the lights were standard incandescent bulbs. Changing their colors was expensive and time-consuming; two to three building staff members, plus a crew of four staff from a lighting contractor, spent hours crawling in and out of office windows and onto the rooftop to install colored theatrical gels on each of the 220 fixtures, even in bad weather. For removal of the gels, the whole process happened in reverse.

Power use is now much lower, and with just an occasional cleaning, maintaining the fixtures is much easier: LED bulbs last as long as 20 years.