In this paper, we study a family of solid-state, organic semiconductors for visible light communications. The star-shaped molecules have a boron-dipyrromethene (BODIPY) core with a range of side arm lengths which control the photophysical properties. The molecules emit red light with photoluminescence quantum yields ranging from 22% to 56%. Thin films of the most promising BODIPY molecules were used as a red colour converter for visible light communications. The film enabled colour conversion with a modulation bandwidth of 73 MHz, which is 16 times higher than that of a typical phosphor used in LED lighting systems. A data rate of 370 Mbit/s was demonstrated using On-Off keying modulation in a free space link with a distance of ∼15 cm. Publisher statement: This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in Vithanage, D. A. , Manousiadis, P. P. , Sajjad, M. T. , Rajbhandari, S. , Chun, H. , Orifino, C. , Cortizo-Lacalle, D. , Kanibolotsky, A. L. , Faulkner, G. , Findlay, N. J. , O'Brien, D. C. , Skabara, P. J. , Samuel, I. D. W. and Turnbull, G. A. (2016) BODIPY star-shaped molecules as solid state colour converters for visible light communications. Applied Physics Letters, volume 109 : 013302 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4953789.