How I Built a 40-Foot Stained Glass Window Stage Design with 18,000 LED Pixels

For a thousand years, churches were built to be impressive pieces of architecture — flooding their buildings with light through massive stained glass windows. Notre-Dame took 200 years to build. Milan Cathedral took almost 600. We don’t build like that anymore. Most churches today are practical spaces — gyms, fellowship halls, auditoriums. So we borrow from theater: take a basic stage and use lighting, LED, fabric, wood, and screens to set the tone for worship.

This is the full build story of the Stained Glass Window Stage Design I installed at First Friends Church for Easter 2025 — 18,000 individually addressable LED pixels spread across custom-built windows that span 40 feet of our stage. Three windows at 16ft, 14ft, and 12ft tall, plus four 4×4ft sections below the screens. Each window is only 3/4-inch thick, built in 4 layers, and weighs about 30 pounds per 4×8ft sheet. Built entirely in-house in the 7 weeks leading up to Easter.

Below is exactly how I designed it, the LED strip and controllers I used, the power distribution, the CNC manufacturing, and the Resolume + Vista 3 control workflow that lets a volunteer run the whole thing on a Sunday morning.

Why we don’t shine lights at the wall anymore

We do church in our gym. The space has rolling walls that separate the stage area from the gym floor, but it’s a constant mental challenge to transform a room where thousands of students play sports each year into a worship space each weekend.

For seven years, the previous design used dim colored lights shining onto hexagon panels, color-matched against ProPresenter worship backgrounds. It worked — but the hexagons and the projector were forever out of sync. After seven years, it was time for something fresh.

The principle I keep coming back to: the most amazing stage designs are wrong, in the wrong church. Copying a great-looking design from another church almost never works. The right design has to fit your room, your congregation, your worship culture, and your technical capabilities. Stained glass made sense at our church because it’s a throwback to ancient sanctuary architecture — it tells a story the moment people walk in.

Inspiration and ruling out the wrong paths

I look through ChurchStageDesignIdeas.com regularly to capture inspiration. The Lit Stained Glass project Eagle Church in Whitestown, Indiana posted in 2020 was the spark. They had figured out a way to fake stained glass with LED strip and a diffuser.

Before I landed there, I ruled out two ideas:

• Real stained glass. I found old windows on Facebook Marketplace, but they were too small for our 60-foot-wide, 18-foot-tall stage and too expensive for a permanent install at our scale. Real glass also requires real light behind each pane, which gets complicated fast.
• Building my own glass frames. Same problem — every pane needs an individual light source, and the structural complexity of glass at that size is unforgiving.

Once I saw an artificial-pane approach was viable, the question became: how do I scale this up and elevate it beyond recognition for our space? Copy and paste is never the goal. Take principles, not designs.

Design decisions before manufacturing

Project scale: why 4ft windows

The design needed to span about 40 feet of usable wall with appropriate spacing. 4ft-wide windows fit that layout perfectly — and 4×8ft is a standard building material size, which means zero wasted plywood. Going to 5ft would have required cutting from a second sheet for every window. Going to 3ft would have made the design feel small on a 60-foot stage.

Frame width: a $0 test that saved a $20,000 mistake

One day I took a table to the stage, taped off a 4ft outline with black gaff tape, and tested 1″, 2″, 3″, and 4″ frame widths in real space. Two inches was the clear winner — substantial enough to read as a stained glass frame from the back row, but not so heavy that the windows looked like a cage.

Small steps like this save you from massive mistakes. Mock it up cheap. Stand in your actual room. Look at it from the actual seats.

Structured vs. dynamic pattern

The biggest design question was whether to focus on the frame of the window (a structured grid) or the panes of glass the frame supports (an organic, irregular pattern). I built a 4×4ft prototype with both — top half organic giraffe-print, bottom half rigid grid. Coming out of the prototype I actually wanted the giraffe look. It felt more artistic.

The leadership conversation pulled me back. We went with the structured grid, and the more time went on, the more grateful I became for that decision. The irregular pattern would have been significantly harder to manufacture — more design time, more CNC time, more soldering. The structured grid is what reads instantly as “stained glass” from across a room.

The four-layer system

The prototype is also where the build technique landed. My original plan was to cut the pattern into the wood and glue diffusion onto a recessed lip. My sister-in-law Carinda asked: “Why don’t you just roll out the diffusion and sandwich it between two pieces of wood?” That comment changed the whole project.

Each window is assembled in four layers, totaling 3/4″ thick:

Layer 1 — Black face (1/4″ plywood)

The front face the congregation sees. CNC-cut from 1/4″ plywood with the stained glass pattern, then painted black. This is the face of the window — clean lines, structured frame, dramatic against the LED light coming through.

Layer 2 — Diffuser film

A roll of Nezyo light diffusion film rolled across the entire back of the front face and taped down to hold position during assembly. Rolling it across the full surface (instead of cutting it pane-by-pane) keeps it smooth and clean, and it looks professional from both sides.

Layer 3 — LED carrier (1/2″ OSB)

This is where the magic lives. A 1/2″ OSB layer with the same pattern cut into it, but slightly smaller than the front face — so the LED strip sits recessed and you see the light rather than the strip itself. The CNC also cuts wire channels into this layer to hide the 12V/GND bus and the data signal jumps from section to section.

LED strip is attached to the inner edges of each pane with double-sided tape.

Layer 4 — White back

A solid sheet of wood with a white finish on the LED-facing side. The white reflects light forward through the diffuser; the solid back gives the whole assembly more rigidity. The huge benefit: you don’t need to worry about what’s behind these windows on the wall. They’re self-contained, light, and tour-ready.

Total thickness: 3/4″. Total weight per 4×8ft sheet: ~30 lbs. Each window is mounted to the wall with a single 2×4 French cleat — same idea as how a heavy picture hangs at home.

The LED strip and why I picked WS2815

I’m using WS2815 LED strip — a 12V, 4-pin, individually addressable LED strip with dual data lines for redundancy. If a single pixel fails on a WS2812B, every pixel after it goes dark. WS2815 keeps running because of the backup data line. For a permanent install at this scale, that resilience is worth every cent.

I ordered the bulk strip direct from BTF Lighting in China for the volume I needed — but the same product is available on Amazon at the link below for smaller projects.

For a deeper dive on pixel control protocols and how Art-Net fits into all of this, see my DMX, Art-Net, and Stage Lighting for Churches guide.

Power distribution: the part you can’t fake

This is the section most DIY church builds get wrong. At this scale, you cannot daisy-chain power and hope for the best. You build a proper power bus, you size your wire, and you stay under continuous-load limits.

The system runs on 12V, with Meanwell power supplies (UL rated — non-negotiable for a permanent church install). The full design draws about 3,012 watts (3.01 kW) and ~40A total spread across 10 power supplies, fed by four dedicated 20A breakers. None of those breakers exceed 74% of the continuous load limit. The whole installation costs about $0.50/hour to operate at full brightness.

Internal bus architecture

Inside each window:

• 14 AWG wire for the 12V and GND main bus, running through CNC-cut channels in Layer 3
• A custom PCB (printed circuit board) at each junction — 14 AWG soldered between PCBs, with 20 AWG branching out to feed the LED strip sections
• 20 AWG wire (red/black/green) from each PCB to the actual LED strip, kept short to minimize voltage drop
• Signal wire also jumps section-to-section internally so each window only needs one data input from the controller

A note on the PCB approach: I didn’t actually use PCBs on the original 2025 install — that came later when I designed my first board for the LED Sticks product line. On the original windows I used wire crimps and terminal connectors, which proved unreliable. Every connection is now solder-only. This design should last until the church chooses to replace it — not because it’s slowly failing.

Controllers: Enttec OCTO MK3

Each window is driven by an Enttec OCTO MK3 pixel controller, mounted on the back of the panel with the 12V, GND, and Art-Net signal cables passing through the back of the structure. The OCTO MK3 takes Art-Net over the network and outputs pixel data to up to 8 universes of WS2815 strip per device. For a multi-window install, this is the cleanest way to keep cable runs short and pixel mapping sane.

For more on the OCTO and pixel control hardware in general, see my Introducing the New LED Pixel Controller from Crazy Amazing Designs post — the CAD pixel controller is designed for smaller-scale projects, but the architectural concepts (Art-Net in, addressable pixels out, network-based config) are exactly the same.

CNC manufacturing — and the machine that built the machine

When I started doing the math on this project, I realized pretty quickly I would not be able to cut this volume of pattern by hand. I needed automation. I needed a CNC machine. So I built one.

Elon Musk has a saying — building the machine that builds the product is just as important, and often more difficult, than building the product itself. That was absolutely true here.

The machine is the LowRider CNC, an open-source design with a hardware kit and 3D-printed parts. I assembled it in two days and had it cutting in less than a week. My brother Eric built a modular 5×10ft table that breaks down for transport in a vehicle — useful for future projects.

The Makita RT0701C compact router (linked below) is what does the actual cutting. It’s the workhorse spinning at the end of the LowRider gantry. With a 1/4″ end mill, it cuts through 1/4″ plywood and 1/2″ OSB cleanly enough for a paint-grade finish.

Workflow:

1. 3D model the window pattern in Fusion 360 (which I already use for 3D printing design)
2. Generate toolpaths in Fusion’s CAM workspace for the router
3. Drop a 4×8 sheet on the table, dust collector running, and hit cut
4. Walk away for 30–60 minutes per sheet

A dust collector on a CNC at this scale isn’t optional — sawdust covers the whole shop in minutes without one. The dust collector linked below is the one I used.

The 7-week sprint to Easter

I’ll be honest about the schedule. Our Lead Pastor Nathanael told me, “Nathan, at any point if you think you can’t get this done before Easter, let me know and we’ll pivot to something else.”

That same day I had to make a decision: do I really want to do this? I work 40 hours a week, and I knew this wasn’t a 40-hour-a-week job. I chose to commit. For the next 7 weeks, 12-hour days became normal. I started skipping staff meetings. I let my volunteer team run Sunday services for the final few weeks so I could be in the shed cutting wood and soldering LEDs.

Total labor: I personally put in about 500 hours through design, manufacturing, and installation. One of our facilities team members put in ~100 hours helping with construction and painting. After installation I spent another 150+ hours pixel-mapping every single LED and creating content in Resolume.

This is the part nobody tells you about big stage projects. The first one always takes the longest. If you’re scoping a project like this for your church, scope it honestly.

Installation and the reveal

We mounted the windows the week before Easter — three sections went up the Wednesday before Palm Sunday, the rest on Monday of Easter week. A simple 2×4 French cleat on the wall does all the work. The windows aren’t heavy — just awkward — so we pulled in extra hands when needed.

The first time I powered them up at our Wednesday rehearsal, I wasn’t prepared for how good it looked at full scale. It’s one of those moments where extroverts go quiet because you can’t process what you’re seeing.

The reveal across services was deliberate. Don’t give everything away too soon — that’s a Passion Conferences principle I’ve internalized. After hundreds of hours of building, the temptation is to light it up the first song and make it dance. Don’t.

• Good Friday: I shined our existing stage lights up onto the new windows. People saw a beautiful new physical design, but didn’t know yet that the windows could light themselves.
• Easter Sunday, song one: “O Praise the Name.” There’s a moment where the band drops out and comes back in strong. In that moment, I lit the windows from within for the very first time. Just a gradient. Nothing crazy. But the shift from external lighting to internal glow was unmistakable.
• The rest of the service: more motion, more dynamics — slowly revealing what the design could actually do.

One of our deacons, Ron Marling, said it best: “Nathan, we thought we were getting a new stage design. Instead you turned this gym into a sanctuary.”

Control workflow: Resolume + Vista 3 + Art-Net

This is where the system stops being a hardware project and becomes a worship tool. It has to be runnable by a volunteer on Sunday morning.

The signal chain

• Resolume Arena runs on a Mac mini M4, pushing nearly 100 universes of Art-Net out over the network
• A dedicated lighting VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) on NETGEAR AV Line switches keeps that traffic separated from the rest of the church network — even has its own “LightingAdmin” Wi-Fi for config
• Art-Net carries the pixel data to each Enttec OCTO MK3, which converts it to WS2815 pixel data on the strip
• Vista 3 lighting console controls Resolume via a custom DMX fixture I built — Vista cues trigger Resolume columns

Resolume layout

Columns are organized by service moment — Pre-Service, Song 1, Announcements, Song 2, Sermon, and so on. Each column has 4 horizontal layers so I can stack effects, palettes, and motion content on top of each other. The whole worship set is staged before the service starts.

What the volunteer actually does

The Vista 3 operator triggers the cue for the current service moment. That cue automatically fires the corresponding Resolume column. The volunteer never technically has to touch Resolume — but I encourage them to swap clips, change palettes, and adjust dynamics week to week.

The real art of running this system isn’t the technical side — it’s taste. Knowing when to slow content down for a reflective moment. Knowing when to pulse the wall white to the kick drum. Knowing when to keep it toned back. The lighting operator is leading worship just as much as the band, the vocalists, or the ProPresenter operator.

We also stopped showing worship backgrounds on the projector. ProPresenter is now black text on a white bar — clean, easy to read, and the windows handle all the visual atmosphere. That decision alone made the room feel completely different.

What didn’t work the first time

Three honest mistakes worth sharing:

1. Wire crimps and terminals failed. The first version of the internal power bus used crimps and screw terminals. Within months, intermittent connections started showing up. The whole system is now solder-only end-to-end.
2. My original “lip and glue” diffuser plan was wrong. Without my sister-in-law’s “just sandwich it” suggestion, I’d have spent weeks building something that looked worse and was harder to assemble.
3. I almost picked the giraffe pattern. The structured grid was the better call for manufacturability and readability. Being pulled back from the artistic-but-impractical option was a gift.

Watch the build

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Gear used in this build

Affiliate links — clicking them helps support what we do at no cost to you.

• WS2815 LED Strip — 12V, 4-pin, dual-data redundant addressable strip; the workhorse for every pane. Buy on Amazon →
• Meanwell Power Supply — UL-rated 12V supplies are the only ones I’ll put in a permanent church install. Buy on Amazon →
• 14 AWG Wire (main bus) — sized for the 12V/GND power bus running internally between PCBs. Buy on Amazon →
• 20 AWG Wire (red, black, green) — the branch wiring from each PCB out to the LED strip sections. Buy on Amazon →
• Edison Power Cables — clean, code-friendly AC feeds from the breakers to each Meanwell supply. Buy on Amazon →
• Enttec OCTO MK3 — the Art-Net to pixel controller; one per window, mounted on the back. Buy on Amazon →
• Wood Screws — for assembling the four-layer sandwich and the French cleats. Buy on Amazon →
• Dust Collector — non-optional with a CNC running 4×8 sheets of plywood. Buy on Amazon →
• Light Diffusion Film (Nezyo) — the diffuser layer that makes the LED light read as a glowing pane instead of a strip. Buy on Amazon →
• Makita RT0701C 1-1/4 HP Compact Router — the cutting head for the LowRider CNC; tough, light, and reliable on long runs. Buy on Amazon →

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Want something like this for your church?

This is one of those projects that came together because of a balance of “I’ve done this before” and “I’ll have to figure it out.” I scaled up techniques from previous projects — many of which are documented on my YouTube channel — but I also developed completely new skills along the way.

If you’re watching this and thinking about something similar for your church but the technical side feels overwhelming — the CNC, the LED wiring, the pixel mapping, the power architecture — that’s exactly why I started Crazy Amazing Designs. Two ways I can help:

1. Apply for a Custom Stage Design — share your space, your budget, and your vision. I only take on a limited number of these per year, but a few 2026 and 2027 slots are still open.
2. Book a one-on-one Zoom training session — I log into your computer, walk through your actual setup, and help you get unstuck on whatever phase of the build you’re in.

Walking into First Friends Church three years ago, I never could have dreamed I’d have the chance to build something at this scale — that it would be loved this deeply, for this long. We didn’t just build a stage design. We built a sanctuary.

In Christ, Nathan Robb · CrazyAmazingDesigns.com

In Loving Memory of Leanna Marling.