Rolls-Royce Shows Off Its Slickest Feature: The Starlight Headliner

Have you ever wondered how Rolls-Royce manages to make the headliner look like a starry night sky? Back in 2006, the UK automaker designed its first Starlight Headliner featuring 800 stars for a customer who required a soft, dispersed lighting environment in his Rolls-Royce Phantom due to a light sensitivity. The company's Bespoke Collective engineers continued to refine the technology, extending it across the entire roof and varying the light intensity to replicate real stars in the sky. Rolls has even integrated these lights into the door cards on certain special edition models.

Today June 21 is the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year. It seems like an odd day for Rolls-Royce to share information on its fabulous night-time headliner feature, but the company has a good excuse. If you don't get a chance to see the stars tonight, you can view these stunning photos of a Rolls-Royce Cullinan Black Badge taken at night in Northern California.

Each star in the headliner is lit by a single strand of fiber optic cable, which is hand-threaded and lit by up to six powerful compact light canons. It takes around nine hours to craft a typical headliner, but custom constellations that are personalized to the owner may take up to a week to complete. Two craftspeople work together to poke anywhere from 1,400 to 1,600 holes into the leather, then hand-trim the fiber optic threads to give them a twinkling effect. Owners can specify bespoke colors, graphics, shooting stars, and illuminated wood veneer.

Customers have asked Rolls-Royce to form the stars into the shape of a family coat of arms, the Ursa Major and Minor constellations, and even a Rolls-Royce monogram that illuminated separately from the other stars. "Could all this be accomplished by a robot? Probably, but it's not. Instead, Rolls-Royce hires detail-obsessed individuals from the specialty areas including textile and technology. The result is a totally different take on heavenly creationism that's always unique and personal," the Bespoke designers said.