Outdoor Lighting Facts

What is meant by outdoor security lighting? It is lighting designed with the purpose of preventing criminal activity. The goal is to light up all vulnerable areas so that intruders will be discouraged from practicing their craft of breaking and entering.

Of course, lighting is only one part of the security picture. Strong locks, alarm systems, cameras, strengthening structural integrity of windows and doors, and other preventive measures are also components of an effective security system.

In commercial settings, security personnel might be necessary. In residential settings, keeping up the appearance of occupancy while the residents are away for extended periods is very helpful. It’s also a good idea to get acquainted with your neighbors and to join neighborhood-watch alliances. It has been proven that an aware, vigilant neighborhood is safer than those where no one knows or looks out for anyone else.

A good outdoor lighting system can put your mind at ease when your neighborhood has had recent crimes reported or when you have valuable assets to protect. So what constitutes an effective outdoor lighting system, and can you have the protection you need without compromising the comfortable, inviting look of your home?

The Big Three

The three most important factors of outdoor security lighting are placement, intensity and the size of the area being lit. People tend to think the brighter the lights, the more secure your home, but where you install your fixtures and the width of the perimeter of light is more important than high-wattage brightness

In some cases, brightness can be a liability rather than an asset. Very bright lights cast dark shadows that intruders can easily lurk within while doing their dirty work.
The stark contrast between the high-intensity perimeter of light and the dark areas behind or beyond the perimeter makes it more difficult to see what is really going on.

You can experiment with this concept yourself. If you have a bright light over your front porch or over your garage and driveway area, have someone else move around to different areas of the yard while you stand at the front walk or the end of the driveway. Take note of when you can no longer see that person clearly as they move toward the darker areas of around your home.

Then cross the street to view the scene from a further distance. At this point, it will be very difficult to see what is going on in the shadows because the light from your fixture will be in your direct line of sight. So chances are you will see a bright glaring fixture and part of your yard bathed in light. But try seeing around the light, such as the paths to the side of the house, or areas under dense tree foliage or behind bushes and shrubs.

If you can no longer see your partner in this experiment, that means your neighbors, if you are relying on them to keep an eye on your house when you’re gone, will not be able to see burglars and intruders who understand the contrast of light and shadow at night all too well.

Outdoor Security Lighting Can Still Look Good

Some people think having multiple bright lights placed all around the home is effective. Well, it is, but you lose the sense of a comfortable home when your yard looks like a football field at night. Fortunately, there are ways to achieve your security goals without you or your neighbors having to put up with your house resembling a nighttime  construction zone.

Toning Down the Lumens

Bathing your house with a muted, diffuse light may be a more effective defense against break-ins than one high-intensity fixture blasting light over your driveway and leaving your far windows completely in the dark.

Brightness is still necessary when security is your main objective. You do need enough wattage and lumens to get the job done right. But as mentioned in discussing landscape lighting design, it is better, for both security and for aesthetics, to have more fixtures with lesser intensity than to rely on one or two flood lights, which are unattractive and not as effective as you might have thought.

Keep in mind there is yet a fourth factor that is quite important, and that is the element of surprise. It is a good idea to augment your outdoor security lighting with motion sensor fixtures that will light up when someone walks by. The technology has improved recently and many homeowners now rely primarily on motion-activated lights to deter would-be intruders, so that their always-on fixtures can be less intense and more attractive. The big benefit, of course, is the substantial savings in electric bills.

Suggestions:

Instead of using a high-intensity discharge light on the side of your house, which can be both expensive to operate and uncomfortable to look at, you can line smaller spot lights underneath the eaves or overhang of the house.

For a more muted effect, try aiming these lights upward toward the eaves, or downward but toward the exterior wall of the house. You can then mount more spotlights on the ground and focus them on the lower part of the house. This uplight/ downlight effect illuminates the building itself rather than the ground in front of it.

While it may seem counterintuitive to light up a building’s exterior rather than the ground where people walk, it is quite effective. A person shows up very clearly against the illuminated building and there is no place to hide.

You can then augment this lighting with motion sensor lights mounted on the outside of the eaves or fascia, aimed downward toward the ground to add unexpected blasts of light along the driveway or walkways when people or cars approach.

For security, ground lighting is important along the driveway and walkways to your home, but small pathway fixtures might not do the job by themselves. If you have a long driveway, some post lighting or pole lighting added to your pathway at certain intervals will work best for security purposes.

Your choice of fixture also matters.  While lantern styles are very attractive, make sure the glass is frosted so the bulb inside is shielded somewhat. The best choice may be fixtures that cover the bulb entirely so that the light is directed to the ground.

Wiring Considerations

Outdoor security lighting is best served with regular household current, usually 110-220 volts, rather than low voltage or 12-volt lighting. If you already have some outdoor lighting connected to your household wiring, it will not be difficult for an electrician to add more connections for fixtures along the exterior wall of your house. For ground lighting, there may be a bit more work and expense involved. If you already have a low voltage landscape lighting system set up, you can simply add battery operated outdoor lights, especially motion-sensor ones, to boost the light production for security purposes.

If you already have high-intensity lamps placed on the exterior of your house in one or more areas, you can replace them with more energy-conserving security lights, such as induction lights or better yet, LED security lights, which use much less electricity for the same amount of work. Of course, you will have to pay the price up front, but the savings will come in time, as LED is very long-lasting.

Uplighting is a fundamental part of a well-designed outdoor lighting scheme. It usually involves placing fixtures on the ground or on the side of a building and pointing them upward to shine on a specific object or area.

But there are other interesting uses for uplighting, such as placing them high up against a house or building and allowing the light to reflect off the eaves or the overhang of the building. What you are seeing is actually reflected light rather than the light source itself. This gives a pleasing, muted effect. Reflected light is an important element of good lighting design. Your main goal in designing a nightscape for your home is to hide the direct source of light whenever possible. This allows you to create lovely effects with light without having bright, glaring bulbs and lamps shining into your visitors’ delicate eyes.

Although we are primarily concerned with outdoor lights, uplighting can also be used indoors. For example, ceiling fixtures can be installed with the light source pointing upwards, in reverse to the more common downlighting. The reflected light from the ceiling can gently illuminate an entire room.

Fixtures designed for the purpose of outdoor uplighting are usually cone-shaped or cylindrical fixtures, but they can be any shape at all…  as long as the lamp/light source is deeply recessed into this covering.

Some of these fixtures can be used for both uplighting and downlighting. The same style of fixture can sometimes be aimed in either direction with a flexible casing that turns 180 degrees. This is handy if you are highlighting large or tall objects, such as trees, walls, shrubs, fountains and statuary. (See more on this below.)

In either case, you want to cover or dim the light source as much as possible when you’re installing fixtures at a low height or directly on the ground, as people tend to look down when they are walking along a pathway at night.

Other Types of Fixtures

Not all uplighting fixtures have a covered light source. Some are flat, such as well lights, pool lights and deck lights. These are meant to be installed low and shine upward with a muted, dimmed light. These are especially effective when fountains and ponds are mixed in with the landscape. While some of these lights are recessed flat into the ground, others may be installed on the side of low walls or steps.

When used for paths, exposed uplights need to be low-wattage or use frosted glass to reduce intensity to avoid glare. A path softly lit with numerous recessed lights directly underfoot or set into the sides of steps can be quite pleasant and effective as long as proper precautions are taken. There should be no glare or visual disturbance caused by these lights. You can test them yourself by looking at them and then looking away, and see if you see an after-effect or ghost light in your vision.

Highlighting Garden Features

When you wish to highlight a part of your landscaping such as a tree, bush, fountain, statue, trellis or grouping of these elements, it is best to use several small fixtures placed at an appropriate distance from the feature.

How do you determine the right placement? Through experimentation. There is no definite wrong or right, but if you want to see the different effects you get at different placements, you can use flashlights and portable lights to judge for yourself what pleases you.

Using uplighting alone can produce a rather dramatic effect and may create some interesting shadows from above.

Placing fixtures on just one side of the object will give you a more 2-dimensional effect. Putting them all around or in a semi-circle and at different angles will highlight the full dimensions of the object.

Adding a few higher downlighting fixtures placed on or near the highlighted element will add balance and create a warmer, fuller look. Placing lights beneath and above the object illuminates it more fully and avoids the shadowy look you might get with single-directional lighting. Some objects may have odd bumps or strange texture that you don’t know about until you start throwing light on it! This is why experimentation is so important for amateur lighting designers.

When uplighting is used to light a building, it should be combined with downlighting for best effects. The closer you place the fixture to the building, the brighter the effect will be, but the perimeter of the lighted area will also be smaller.

Test this effect yourself by placing a flashlight close to a flat surface then slowly drawing it further way. The light grows dimmer but more of the area is lit from that one flashlight.

Since low lights will be placed at an angle, their perimeter will be more oval, more of a teardrop shape. To lessen the effect of a boundary around the lighted area, you can move the fixture further away. So if you want your house exterior to be fully lit while reducing boundaries and shadows, you will want to place uplights at least 5 feet away from the exterior wall, and your downlights should be installed on the back of the eaves or the overhang rather than on the wall itself, if that makes sense. Try it and see for yourself.

Placement of downlights against a wall is a little tricky so we’ll save that for another article.

Outdoor lighting design combines the art of illumination with the science of installation. So first you need to decide what you want your outdoor home environment to look like in the dark of night… and then you need to figure out how to achieve that look you want in the most practical sense, using available lighting fixtures that are affordable to purchase, install and use. No doubt compromises will be necessary. But remember you can slowly inch your way to your dream… you don’t have to do it all at once.

Outdoor lighting design uses certain fundamental concepts that are not very well known for the simple reason that many homeowners never give the subject that much thought.

Most of us were brought up with the concept that lighting the outdoors serves only utilitarian purposes: first, to allow us to walk to our front door or around to the garage without tripping over unseen obstacles and causing ourselves bodily harm… and second, to discourage burglars and intruders by depriving them of the “cover of darkness” to do their dirty work. Or to put it more succinctly, we are used to thinking that outdoor lighting has only two purposes: safety and security.

But a little bit of research and observation reveals that, not only is there a third and very important purpose for outdoor lighting, namely, aesthetics or beautifying the night time environment… but also that some of our assumptions about the other two purposes, safety and security, have been misguided.

For example, we learn that the custom of having just one bright, glaring porch light over the front steps isn’t as safe as once thought. A single light causes rapid contraction of the pupil which makes it much more difficult to see in the areas outside of the lit perimeter. And security lighting, by overwhelming the eye with such strong wattage, can actually help intruders find the dark shadows where they can operate unseen behind or beyond the perimeter, perhaps along the side yard or behind a tree or bush.

Fundamentals of Lighting Design for Beginners

Since most of us are beginners when it comes to outdoor lighting design, here are a few basic rules to keep in mind before embarking on the exciting adventure of designing your own outdoor landscape lighting project. A successful design includes all three purposes of safety (easy navigation around your entire yard at night), security (protection from unwanted visitors), and aesthetics (beauty and an easy, pleasant feeling in the eyes of the beholder–literally!).

More is better than less. What that means is, many fixtures placed around your home and yard is more effective in achieving all your aims than just one, or a few scattered here and there.

Soft is better than bright. Each fixture needs to emit an amount of light that can be easily absorbed by the human eye without unpleasantness or the desire to look away, or worse, to shut one’s eyes until the after-glare fades away. Soft combined with many is far better than bright combined with few.

Shielded is better than exposed. A light fixture with the source of light (the bulb or lamp) fully exposed is putting your eyes through an unwanted workout of contracting and dilating. Remember that night darkness combined with bright lights can be worse than unpleasant, it can be dangerous. Any direct light needs to be a) completely covered, b) muted with frosted and/or textured glass, or c) dimmed with low voltage input.

Small is better than large. Small fixtures can be combined for added brightness, but one bright fixture cannot be split apart… so when it doubt, choose the smaller option and add to it as necessary.

Variety is better than sameness. A variety of fixtures adds interest, depth, excitement and other good design qualities to your scheme. Some placed low, some mounted high, some round, some square… some placed evenly along a path, others placed strategically scattered about… you get the idea. And it doesn’t apply only to your fixtures. The way you aim your light can also vary, with reflected light mixed in with directed light, and so on.

Experimentation is better than… not. It is always a good thing to learn through experimentation, and you can do that easily enough by using flashlights, portable battery operated lights and cheap solar lights to get you some real life experience. When you understand how lighting works, and how you can get different effects with placement, brightness, angle, and so on, it will be much easier to transform your outdoor lighting design into something that delights you, your visitors and your neighbors.