Residential Lighting Tips
Making your exterior home lighting Dark Sky and Neighbor Friendly isn’t rocket science, but it takes a little thought. Click on the links below for simple one-page guides that make it easy! Also look at our Dark Sky Residential Lighting Products page.
Guiding Principles
In residential environments, light trespass is the principal concern. Popular lighting fixtures for porch lights, garage lights use unshielded designs – sometimes called “brass and glass” – that allow light, intended conceptually for providing visibility on your porch or driveway, to shine across the street into your neighbor’s property and up into the sky. Our experience is neighbor-to-neighbor trespass is the principal source of complaint received by codes enforcement departments.
The solutions are as simple as they are unfortunately uncommon –
Shielding — 400 lm-800 lm lamps — Amber spectrum
| Shielding: Use fixtures that shine light downward and not sideways or upward. The reduction of trespass and glare not only fosters good neighborhood relations, but also dramatically improves visibility provided by the lighting on your own property through reduction of glare. |  |
| Output: Because of the lack of glare, the amount of light needed to provide good visibility is also reduced. A 400-800 lm bulb in most situations is entirely adequate, providing excellent visibility and a pleasing ambience. | |
| Amber spectrum: Amber bulbs, sometimes called “bug” lights, provide a pleasing ambience as well as dramatically reducing glare and skyglow in your neighborhood. In fact, for reducing skyglow, the amber spectrum (instead of any kind of white – even warm white) has even greater benefits than shielding. In the LED era all amber bulbs are not equivalent – many have a greenish tinge that increases glare and skyglow impacts, and also appears unattractive to many. Unfortunately it is not possible looking at the product online or in a store to know which bulbs have the best spectra – we try to keep track of the Amber products and list the best below. |  |
Handouts
Floodlights — Aim them downward as much as possible. Motion sensors should only “see” areas near your house and not turn on for branches blowing or pedestrians walking by in the street.
Walkway Lights — Replace fixtures with fully shielded styles… Since there is less glare you will be able to see much better even with less light!
Porch / Garage Lights — What’s that glaring “carriage” light doing on your house? Are you planning to drive it down the street?
Bulb Types — Choose from 8 Incandescent (including Halogen) and 4 Compact Fluorescent (CFL) lamp types.
And remember – for all lights, consider yellow sources (“bug” lights or similar) to minimize glare, trespass, sky glow, ecological disturbance and human circadian disruption.
 Unshielded porch lights |
 Shielded porch lights |
On the left: Unshielded porch lights shine in your eyes (and across the street) and reduce visibility. On the right: Shielded fixtures reduce glare and make it easier to see.
Finding fully shielded outdoor house lighting fixtures is simple.
Look at our Dark Sky Residential Lighting Products page for locally (Flagstaff) and on-line available shielded residential lighting fixtures. Do right by the night!
