I've tried to read the good information here on the Cyc lights. We're a theater in a small town and so our budget is somewhat limited. Our state is roughly 35 feet wide and 18 feet high. The back light bar is around 8 feet from the white curtain. We have a hard ceiling so I wouldn't want anything too big on the light bar as it would be visible from the audience.

So with that said - The so called cyc lights themselves seem pretty expensive. So I'm considering using some strip lights (border lights) such as this http://www.stagelightingstore.com/Altman-R40-Striplight-3-circuit-6-ft-?sc=25&category=1383. We'd probably get by with 4 of these that would be around $1,500 or so once you consider gels and such.

The other option I'm looking at is led light bar such as this: http://www.amazon.com/American-DJ-Mega-Bar-LED/dp/B000V0DMFE/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1307942414&sr=8-12 . This one is supposed to be the wall washer one. I think we could use 4 of these for around $1,500.

We don't have a good floor option due to the small size of our stage so these would most likely be ceiling mounted. I could probably put led bars on the floor if we had to but we don't have the power wiring for high powered lights on the floor.

I'm leaning on the LEDs since they are roughly the same price but i would be worried about brightness (or lack of it.) Has anybody tried the American DJ LEDs? Our other lights are 500W halogen so they are fairly bright but won't necessarily be aimed at the white curtain.

Thanks in advance.

Lights that are designed for cyc lighting have the advantage of a special  reflector. They throw less light toward the closest part of the cyc and more to the parts that are further away. This produces a much smoother color than other lights can. Strip lights use lamps that are getting and more expensive and are harder to find than the lamps used in most cyc lights. Plus, I really consider strips to be a waste of space on a light pipe. It would be great to go with LED based cyc lights, but they will be very expensive by the time you buy enough to light a cyc to the level you can with conventional units. LEDs would be a lot cheaper to operate, especially if the progressives stay in power. I'm using Selecon Hui cyc lights and they do an excellent job. I think their Auroras are a bit more efficient though. I may add a few single cell Auroras to get more blue back there. Blue gels suck up much more of the light than Red, Amber, and Green do. BTW "cyc" is short for "cycolorama" (that white cloth you refereed to).

I was trying to use 4 to cover a cyc that had a little over 40' exposed and about 19' high (a 48' x 20' cyc). It seemed like the 4 units I had needed to be at least 7'-8' away to get nice coverage from the bottom. I felt this was too far, even though I prefer to light a cyc from the bottom, so I moved them to the top on my 3rd electric which is about 12' from the cyc and they work nicely from there, but I want to add 5 larger units to improve the blues, and give me room for a yellow or amber circuit.