Commercial LED Outdoor Lighting

Enhancing Security with Outdoor Lighting

Effective outdoor lighting has a massive impact on security. It can deter trespassers and make people feel seen. This is a good feeling for anyone who simply wants to enjoy the space or move safely through it, but a bad feeling for anyone who wants to avoid witnesses to their actions.

In short, you want to make your property (and therefore your customers, tenants, and employees), a wildly unappealing target. Proper lighting can also help you get the most out of your security footage, ensuring you can see doorways and individuals more clearly, should you need to intervene or view the footage after an incident.

Lighting Products that Can Handle Security Duty

Exterior lights need to be able to withstand being exposed to rain, snow, wind, dust, and other aspects of nature. They also need to remain consistent in terms of output and color purity. That means ensuring you have fixtures graded for outdoor use.

Finally, consider the placement light spread of your lights. You’ll need to make sure you plan for maintenance, so any single outage doesn’t have an overreaching negative impact on the lighting of your facility. You’ll also want to check for any shadowy pockets that detract from the sense of safety you’ve crafted. Your lighting is only as effective as the darkest place people have to navigate. Meanwhile, you want to avoid any areas of excessive light that will create an unpleasant level of contrast with the surroundings or create an “interrogation room” effect.

Creating the Right Mood, Atmosphere, and Experience with Outdoor LED Lights

This goal of exterior lighting can likely be achieved at least in part with the same lights you’ve chosen for their security and safety features. Using high quality fixtures and creating consistency throughout your footprint will go a long way.

Here are a few tips for using outdoor LED lights to shape the experience your guests enjoy in your outside space:

Maintenance and Upkeep

It isn’t enough to achieve the three objectives listed above. Commercial buildings need to be able to accomplish all of their lighting needs while protecting their bottom line. That means selecting the products that have the longest life span and use the least energy (LEDs are the clear choice here).

LED Parking Lot Lighting

Controlling for Light Spillage

If you have an outdoor parking lot, there may be local ordinances that prevent light from spilling outside the bounds of your parking lot. This would impact the light spread that will work for your application and flood lights may be less appropriate. In that case, you would want to consider lenses that reduce unwanted light spillage, compared with traditional shoe box fixtures, which contain a reflector and HID light bulb. Not only that, some states have strict requirements related to color temperature, due its effect on local wildlife, while others have local differences in what is considered “light pollution.”

Depending on what region or state you’re in, we can help you untangle and understand the impact of local codes on the products you use to illuminate your parking areas. Contact us today.

Evaluating Your Parking Area Usage

There are some significant factors you need to consider when purchasing outdoor lighting for your parking lot or structure:

Retrofitting Parking with LEDs

If you’re retrofitting your parking lot, you don’t have the freedom of determining the number and placement of poles or deciding what height you want. That makes it even more important to select the best product for your environment. That means looking at the optics and beam pattern, the wattage and lumen output, and the correct voltage for your current system.

Dusk to Dawn Parking Solutions

Using a master photocell is an excellent option for LED parking lights. In this situation, all lights are wired to one master photocell, that turns all the lights on or off, based on the available light outside. This saves energy and labor costs year round, adapting smoothly to changes in the sunset and sunrise times during different seasons. Or, if you don’t already have dimming wires run to a master photocell and don’t want to take that on, each light can be outfitted with an individual photocell.