Commercial Landscape Lighting – Is Your Property Safe at Night?

Commercial landscape lighting is important for several reasons. Lights on pathways and stairs keep people from tripping or falling, which could lead to lawsuits. Lighting up your landscape helps prevent crime; criminals can’t hide in properly lit areas. Lights also help people navigate at night. If it’s too dark to read the signs they may get lost, frustrated, and determined not to come back. Make sure your lighting doesn’t leave you vulnerable to these problems.

Commercial Landscape Lighting For Safety

Properly lit pathways aren’t just used to direct customers to your building when it is dark outside. Commercial lighting is also very important for safety reasons. Dark paths are not just uninviting, they are dangerous. So how can you incorporate lighting into your landscaping to help protect people coming to your building at night?

• Use soft lighting on pathways so people can see the edges of pathways and corners and won’t trip or fall.
• Use special staircase lights to illuminate the lip and tread of each stair.
• Illuminate the paths around water features so someone does not fall in.
• Highlight the entrances and exits of buildings and parking lots.

Reduce Crime

Light up every corner of your property to eliminate places someone could hide and ambush customers and employees. If you have an area that is rarely used, put in motion-triggered lights to save energy. Make sure the lights that come on do not shock or blind the person that triggered them.  Criminals do not want to stay in a place where they can be seen. There are too many other dark places to lie in wait.

Allow Nighttime Navigation

Signage is vital to help people get onto and off of your property. If it is not illuminated, signage is useless at night. People get frustrated because they cannot see where things are on the property and how to get off the property. Frustrated patrons rarely return.

Showcase Your Property

These are the negative reasons to light your commercial landscape. Lighting can also be used to accentuate the positives. Showcase your property’s focal point by lighting it up. Light your landscape plants and foliage to improve curb appeal.

Choosing Your Lights

There are many types of outdoor lights you can use and it’s important to know what the best types of commercial landscape lighting are available. 

• To highlight foliage, put a tree ring light at the appropriate height.
• If you do not have many trees, ground lights can be used as an alternative to a tree ring light. These lights come in several heights so you can use the one that is appropriate for the area.
• Lamp posts illuminate larger areas and can look very decorative.
• Bollards(short posts used to create perimeters) can block traffic and keep people out of areas, but also light the correct path if they have lighting on them.

It is important to buy sturdy light fixtures. Cheap lights will break and have to be replaced. Use LED lights in your lights so that you do not have to replace the bulbs too often. LED bulbs last 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs. They are also cheaper to use. LED lights use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs. Use photocell lights that come on at dusk and go off at dawn. That way you do not have to change the timer each season.

Professional Installation

Landscape lighting is an art and science. Lighting things just right is an art, but managing the technical aspect is a science. For example, every point along the pathways should get at least one foot-candle (10.75 lumens) of illumination. Let All Metro Service Companies install lighting in your commercial landscape. Our technicians are trained to pinpoint which light needs to go where. We can provide lighting that is balanced and easy on the eye. Call All Metro Service Companies today at (763) 789-4788 and we will help you light up your landscape.