You have to start by knowing what the minimal amount of light you need for however you are planning on shooting this project.
I had a similar problem on a movie, a nightclub where the owner would only allow me to add SLIGHTLY brighter lights to her very dim lighting scheme. I basically used 800 ASA film and Super-Speed lenses, and decided I could get away with underexposing the main lights by one stop, so that's how "bright" I lit the nightclub to, basically to 1600 ASA at T/1.4. The rest of the nightclub's lighting was probably another stop below that, but I knew that it would read on film. But the whole scene was still a bit grainy for my tastes (this was not a documentary afterall) and the focus was really shallow in 35mm, plus I was shooting everything handheld.
So let's say you're shooting on the Sony F900, which is about 320-to-400 ASA at 0 db with a 1/48th shutter. So testing shows you that you can get away with +6 db, which is one stop more exposure, so about 800 ASA. Then you can turn off the shutter and get the equivalent of 1600 ASA (or 800 ASA at 1/24th of a second.) And you decide that the colored lighting can be about a stop underexposed to look natural. And you use lenses that are T/2.0 wide-open, like some zooms are.
With this knowledge, you can now add lighting to the club to a bare minimum level to get an exposure, and probably not be overpowering the available light in the club as well.
Or if you're shooting Super-16 on 7218, you may decide that you can get away with rating the stock at 1000 ASA with a one-stop push, and you can use a T/2 zoom, and that the lights can be exposed one-stop under. So again, now you know what level you can light to.
