We consider illumination rendering with distributed control of a lighting system with an array of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). As low-cost microprocessors become standard components in LED drivers, distributing the computation of the control signals to individual LED drivers becomes attractive. Common distributed control algorithms require each individual controller to exchange information with all the others and process it. This incurs too large a communication and processing overhead for a low-cost local controller. In this Letter, we propose a distributed control algorithm for achieving global illumination rendering, wherein a controller only needs to communicate within a selected neighborhood. We present design criteria for defining the communication neighborhood and study its impact on rendering performance.