DJ lighting is a variant of stage lighting

Stage lighting

Modern stage lighting is a flexible tool in the production of theatre, dance, opera and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in the pursuit of the various principles or goals of lighting. Stage lighting has grown considerably in recent years...

 that is used by mobile DJs

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

 and in nightclubs. DJ lighting is generally used by mobile disco DJs and in most modern nightclubs

Nightclub

A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

 and many late-night bars

Bar (establishment)

A bar is a business establishment that serves alcoholic drinks — beer, wine, liquor, and cocktails — for consumption on the premises.Bars provide stools or chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. Some bars have entertainment on a stage, such as a live band, comedians, go-go...

.

There are many different types of DJ lighting such as scanners which use a mirror to reflect beams of light that move around, twister-style effects that project multiple beams of light that rotate in a twisting style and also strobe lighting that flash intensely.

DJ lighting can be controlled by an internal sound activation, where the unit has a built-in sound to light function. Other control options are master-slave (daisy chain) and DMX control.

Party lights

In the DJ equipment industry, any party disco light that is designed and sold for home use is considered a party DJ light or a party disco light.

Retro lights

In the early days of disco, the main types of disco light were colorful rotating balls. They looked very much like a mirrorball

Disco ball

A disco ball is a roughly spherical object that reflects light directed at it in many directions, producing a complex display...

 with multi-coloured par 16 lamps in them.

Projectors

With the technology of halogen lampss improving, the 80s and early 90s saw a new breed of DJ light starting to evolve. This was a projection-style DJ light that used a halogen lamp and a mirror to reflect the light. A halogen lamp shines onto a mirror via a filter gel

Color gel

A color gel or color filter , also known as lighting gel or simply gel, is a transparent colored material that is used in theatre, event production, photography, videography and cinematography to color light and for color correction...

 sheet to create the color and sometimes via a gobo wheel

Gobo (lighting)

A gobo derived from "Go Between" or Goes Before Optics -originally used on film sets, is a physical template slotted inside, or placed in front of, a lighting source, used to control the shape of emitted light....

 to create shapes. In some DJ lighting effects a coloured mirror is used to avoid using color/filter gel.

Most modern projector DJ lights now use LED

LEd

LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

s instead of halogen lamps.

Lasers

Lasers are a relatively new type of DJ light. They use a laser diode

Laser diode

The laser diode is a laser where the active medium is a semiconductor similar to that found in a light-emitting diode. The most common type of laser diode is formed from a p-n junction and powered by injected electric current...

and an array of mirrors to project multiple colours and beams of light.