Nov 30, 2023 8:22:44 AM
A well-lit property is a safer property. But that is contingent on smart decisions in regard to choosing outdoor lighting for your home.
If you’re thinking about incorporating outdoor safety lighting at your Memphis home, you want to make sure you get the full value out of that investment. That boils down to choosing the right lights and having them installed in optimal locations around your property.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to light your property best if one of your primary goals is safety.
A key consideration in maximizing the functionality of your lighting is making sure that potential “accident areas” are well-lit.
For instance, you want to ensure you have great step lighting.
Any time that you are navigating stairs in the dark, you want to make sure that you can see exactly where you are going so that you don’t risk falling.
There are different ways that you can light up your steps (as highlighted in the article linked above) but the key is making sure that steps are illuminated enough that you and your friends and family can see everything. Trip and fall accidents on steps are more likely in the evening hours if people can’t see where they are going.
But steps aren’t the only place where accidents happen. Every property is unique and should be assessed for an outdoor safety lighting plan.
Other examples of areas that need to be properly lit for safety include:
It’s important that your lighting plan is customized to your property and how it’s used.
When choosing outdoor lighting for your home you also want to make sure that you’re selecting the proper brightness of the lights. Brightness plays a really important role in the functionality of the lighting design.
It’s important to note that brightness works both ways. If your outdoor lights are too bright they can be intrusive and even uncomfortable. That can certainly decrease their safety.
But if they’re not bright enough, they might not be functional the way that you want them to be.
While people often think about the number of light fixtures that they have around their property, it’s also the brightness of each fixture that matters when it comes to the overall safety of your design.
Different lighting applications will require different levels of brightness. Security lighting, as an example, is often about ensuring a home is well-lit so that intruders stay away. In this application, lighting is often brighter to achieve those goals.
The same goes for outdoor safety lighting. It’s important that lights are bright enough in certain areas, such as the steps, for safety purposes.
While outdoor safety lighting serves a very important function, it’s important to mention that there is so much more to it than adding a spotlight or two. There was a time when people would stick a spotlight in the yard and call it “outdoor lighting.”
But nowadays, it doesn’t have to be so utilitarian. Great outdoor lighting is both useful AND beautiful.
While this article was focused on choosing outdoor lighting for your home it’s also important to mention that people often have multiple overlapping reasons why they want to incorporate lighting. You probably not only want your home to be safer and more secure but also more functional and aesthetically beautiful.
Lighting can achieve all of these different goals simultaneously, with the right outdoor lighting design.
The key really does boil down to making smart choices with a professional lighting designer leading the way.
To get the most out of your lights, the entire process should be customized to your property. When we talk about a custom design, we are talking about a lighting designer that is truly starting from a fresh slate on each and every project.
While some companies might claim to do this, if you were to drive around and look at all their projects at night, you might start to notice they look identical. It’s not uncommon for lighting professionals to fall into a rut of creating the same design again and again because it’s what they’re used to doing.
But at Mid South Outdoor Lighting & Audio, we believe every property is unique and deserves a unique outdoor lighting design.
At Mid South Outdoor Lighting & Audio, we know that outdoor lighting is more than just something that “looks nice.” While there’s no doubt it will add tremendous aesthetic appeal, it also brings functional value by allowing you to get more use out of your space and making your property safer and more secure.
These are all really important reasons why choosing the right lights is so critical.
Fortunately, when you choose to work with an experienced outdoor lighting professional, you can feel confident that your lighting design will be everything that you need it to be.
