Commercial Outdoor Lighting

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What is commercial outdoor lighting?

When most of us think of lighting; we think of lighting our homes…inside and outside…with decorative, cost and energy efficient lighting. Although there is a world of lighting outside our homes, most of us fail to realize it. Take a step outside your home and you will find that your roads are flooded with light, parking lots are well lit and even your sidewalks are well lit. Without these lights our world will be filled with darkness, with no one feeling secure and crime rates will be on the rise, for that is how important commercial outdoor lighting is. Let’s understand what commercial lighting is and where you can get your lights for cheap.

What is commercial lighting?

Commercial lights are any lights that are used for purposes other than residential such as roads, highways, business establishments, hospitals, factories and parking lots. Commercial lighting is broadly classified into commercial outdoor lighting and indoor commercial lights.

Outdoor commercial lighting

These are lights that are used for illumination outside businesses, industries, hospitals and other non-residential areas. Commercial lighting fixtures that are used for outdoor lighting include those that are used on streets as street lights, as lighting for roads and highways, for billboards, parking lots, malls, outside school, college and business areas. These lights are extremely durable and capable of withstanding harsh environments including storms and heavy wind.

Indoor commercial lighting

Indoor commercial light fixtures are lights that are used inside non-residential buildings such as schools, hospitals, universities, businesses and malls.  They also include lighting for operating theaters and assembly lines. This is why this type of lighting needs to be extremely efficient as without it, production can come to a standstill.

Commercial lighting is especially available with those who specialize in manufacturing and selling lights for commercial purposes. These lights are usually extremely energy and cost efficient as they cater to industrial standards and most wholesalers offer discounts as the quantities purchased are often in bulk. Be sure to check your options online as a lot of online retailers do offer discounts that will guarantee you a good deal.

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Some not so pretty commercial lighting fixtures

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Remember the old saying children should be seen, not heard? In the world of commercial outdoor lighting, the fixtures should neither be seen nor heard. What we're looking for in outdoor lighting is illumination for 3 purposes:

To beautify the area being illuminatedTo light the path and protect people walking around at nightTo draw attention to the facility or sign for the purpose of being found at night

We want to be able to see the building better, see the house better, see the tree better, see the path better, see the sign better. But we don't want to see the fixture. Some commercial fixtures are ok looking but for the most part, they're not spectacular to look at. And even if they are, the reason for outdoor lighting is to see, illuminate and beautify what we already have.

Take a look at this picture. If you look closely it might look familiar. That's because this is the commercial landscape lighting setting at a familiar national retail chain.

There are 3 problems with the design of this commercial landscape lighting:

ScaleOverkillVisual distractionMaterial/finish

Look at the scale of the size of the commercial lighting fixtures compared to the size of the tree. While there is nice balance in this design, the large size of the fixtures competes with the tree which should be not only the focal point of this design.

The physical size of these fixtures is overkill. This tree is small. The purpose of lighting commercial landscaping is for beautification. It is not for safety nor to direct people to a location. So the desired effect of lighting this tree in commercial outdoor landscape lighting design would be to illuminate the silhouette of the small trunk and to gently graze the leaves with soft romantic light. A very small fixture is necessary to accomplish this objective.

These oversized fixtures are a visual distraction. This is a gorgeous tree and deserves the spotlight in a figurative sense - not a literal sense.

I'm not sure of the material/finish coating of these fixtures. It is likely a paint. While that leads to consistency of color across all fixtures used in this design, they would be better served to use a natural metal which oxidizes and patinas over time such as copper. The other benefit of using a natural metal is that it doesn't peel or scratch.

In short, if your commercial design emphasizes what it's illuminating more than anything else, and if the nighttime effect is what you are looking for, then it's a good design.

At Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, our commercial lighting fixtures come in a variety of natural metals including cast brass and our most popular - copper.

Do you have any photos of the good, the bad and the ugly as it relates to commercial lighting fixtures?

Here are some cut sheets for these fixtures:

Medium range bollard commercial fixture

Commercial flood light

Commercial up-down light

Commercial directional accent light

Commercial bullet light fixture

Commercial pole light/lamp fixture

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What's wrong with this commercial sign lighting picture?

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What's wrong with this picture?

I wish I could have taken this picture a little later at night to show the full effect.

Here are the things that are wrong:

The fixtures are pointing in the wrong directionThe bulbs are dim and need to be replacedThe fixtures are improperly spaced

When doing commercial sign lighting, lighting the landscaping around the sign is equally as important as the sign lighting itself. The sign and landscaping create a total scene that welcomes owners home, entices future owners, and makes it easier for visitors to find the subdivision at night.

You can see by looking at the picture that the area that the fixtures are best illuminating is the mulch landscaping ground cover. A simple small adjustment of the fixture angle could do the trick in directing the light in the correct direction.

The fixtures in the photo above have an elbow on them like you see in this photo which allows for easy hand-adjustment of the fixtures.

The fixture you see here is a copper fixture unlike the one above. There are a couple advantages to using copper fixtures like this one from Outdoor Lighting Perspectives. The biggest aesthetic benefit is that the copper will patina allowing it to blend into the landscaping instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. Before it patinas, the copper is just stunning so you get the best of both worlds aesthetically.

The biggest functional benefit is that the fixture is made of solid metal. It is not painted. Therefore, you won't have any chipping and also a solid metal is much stronger than resin and other synthetic materials.

Dim Bulbs

In the photo above you will also notice how dim the bulbs are. While this photo was taken in the very early evening, you can still tell that this light fixture, although only a couple feet away, is barely casting a shadow on the bush in front of it. It's easy to let bulbs get dim because they dim slowly over time thus making it harder to tell when it's time to change them out.

Proper outdoor lighting fixture spacing

The final problem with this competitor's outdoor lighting design is that the fixtures are improperly spaced. You can see that the only two fixtures are placed close together thus "over-illuminating" one area and leaving the other area dark. The sign is actually to the right of this landscaping so that side is even more important.

It is likely that the landscaping team installed this outdoor lighting. While landscaping teams can be effective at outdoor lighting, it is not their primary business. As well all know, when investing in something critical, it's better to utilize the experts in a given area. It is akin to having our home builder decorate our homes. While they know our homes inside and out, and often get to know us during the process, and... see many beautifully decorated homes -- it's just not what they do.

Take a look to see if there is an Outdoor Lighting Perspectives near you on our locations list.

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