Upgraded rainbow murals dazzle onlookers once again

I attended the unveiling of Hilton Hawaiian Village’s renovated rainbow murals last week. After 45 years in Hawaii’s sun and salt air, the original murals — two identical ones on each side of the building — were showing their age.

Admirably, Hilton undertook a four-year, $4.25 million renovation. Both murals were digitally photographed, laboriously torn down, and re-created using modern technology.

The new mural tiles were made with sophisticated inkjet printers. Instead of ink, they printed the design in glazing material, then fired them in a kiln.

"The tiles have to be nonglossy; otherwise they’d reflect like a mirror," says Tony Sheets, whose father, Millard Sheets, was the original designer. "It has a large variety of color variations and subtle textures that absorbs light and give it a rich appearance."

The original rainbow murals were the world’s tallest when they were made in 1968. Millard Sheets died in 1989. His son, Tony, was 20 and helped with the original and with the renovation.

Sheets remembers the labor-intense process of creating each of the original 16,000 tiles.

"The tiles were laid in big sections on the floor of a large exhibit hall," he said. "Artists were suspended over the tiles, with glazes squeezed from ketchuplike plastic bottles, so they could apply the glazes onto large areas of the mural. It was a long, slow process indeed."

They were then sent through a kiln to set, numbered, packed in reverse sequence and sent to Hawaii.

The original tiles were attached to the Rainbow Tower without expansion joints which, over 40 years, led many of them to crack and fall.

Hilton responded by installing 6,000 screws in the tiles. Pacific Consultants International, the company leading the renovation, digitally photographed the current mural, but that was problematic.

They had to digitally replace the dark spot where the 6,000 screws were and balance the colors, since the photographs were taken at different times of day, in different lighting conditions. It was a massive job, one of the largest man-made structures in Hawaii to be made with the help of Photoshop.

The original murals were lit with fluorescent bulbs running up their length. The bulbs burned out so often, Hilton gave up on replacing them. Instead, they lit the murals with floodlights from below.

The new murals are lit with modern LED bulbs, spaced every 2 inches along the outside. The new LED bulbs should last 25 to 35 years, they figure. The result is spectacular at night, as seen by this photo.

Tony Sheets came back to Hawaii for the unveiling. He pointed out that Waikiki hotels are typically painted a bland gray or beige, which makes the rainbow murals stand out even more. "The colors really pop, particularly for planes flying by."

Sheets also noted that the rainbow murals are among the first things sailors in the Transpacific Yacht Race see after entering Waikiki.

"I was up around 4:30 this morning," Sheets said. "I walked down the beach, to the point, and all of a sudden the LED lights came on and the mural was ablaze in light. I felt Dad with me. He’d be very happy with the renovated mural."

Gov. Neil Abercrombie said the "Hilton rainbow mural has served as an iconic landmark. It has been showcased in numerous film and television appearances, as well as a background for the photos and memories of thousands of visitors to Oahu from around the world and throughout the islands."

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.