Oxo Tower Wharf lights up London - with a twist!

Oxo Tower Wharf from above

The famous O X O lights of Oxo Tower Wharf are once again lighting up the London skyline following a major refurbishment project.

The well-known red neon lights of this riverside iconic building have been replaced by sustainable LEDs. Not only can Londoners and visitors see the O X O lights shine red again, but they can look out for a special light display on the hour, every hour during the hours of darkness. Move over Big Ben!

“We are really excited with the new sustainable lighting, and hope Londoners and visitors will be looking out for it, especially the new hourly Oxo light sequence”, says Alison Pinner, deputy group director of Coin Street Community Builders, the social enterprise that owns and manages of Oxo Tower Wharf.

The LEDs combined with cloud technology provide extraordinary design, colour and programming flexibility with millions of different combinations of colours, static scenes and moving sequences. This gives the option for Oxo Tower Wharf to join in major celebrations by switching the colours. So keep an eye on the tower throughout the year to see the changes.

Coin Street worked with lighting specialists Architainment, known for their lighting projects for other London landmarks including the London Eye and Alexandra Palace. For the Oxo Tower Wharf light project, Architainment used Pharos controllers with the Architainment cloud allowing exceptional flexibility regarding design, colour and programming.

Our iconic O X O Tower has stood tall since 1929 and believe it or not at that time was the second highest commercial building on the London skyline. At the time, The London City Council did not look favourably on ‘skysigns’, especially so high on the river so the initial proposal was refused. When the architect who designed the sign, Albert W Moore, revised the proposal to O X O as an “elemental geometric form” on all four sides of the tower, the ‘sign’ could no longer be classified as an advert, and so the building then shone magenta, spelling out name of the leading brand of stock cube.

Get down to the South Bank and take a look! Tag us (@oxotowerwharf) in your photos on social media and use the hashtag #oxolights and we’ll share our favourites.