Lighting for safety, aesthetics and function

If you’re looking for a place to store a car, go to a car park. But if you have a business to run, customers who drive, and the need for well-lit outdoor environment, read on.

Your customers’ shopping experience starts in the parking lot. People will not stop and shop if they feel their personal safety is in jeopardy. They would rather drive on to your competitor. To prevent this, make sure that your customers’ first impressions are of aesthetics and safety, by designing, installing, and monitoring your parking lot light levels in accordance with the guidelines that follow.

Safety First!

The purpose of lighting in a parking lot is to make sure that pedestrians can safely and securely move to and from their vehicles and within the site. The key to a good design is to Match the Lighting to the Task. Each application must have a purpose, such as guiding pedestrians and motorists, deterring vandalism, or helping people locate their car. Here are some tips:

• High Traffic Locations - Give special consideration when lighting areas with high traffic volumes. Exits, entrances, automatic gates, cross-walks, cross-aisles, and ring roads should be well lit so people can identify them as areas of special importance and so pedestrians can be seen and avoided.


• Driveway Entrances - The lighting design at your driveway entrance should at least match the local street light design with respect to horizontal and vertical luminance. For large shopping centers with high volumes of traffic, you may want to increase lighting levels by up to 50%. Enhanced lighting not only lets people know when to turn, it highlights the striping and curbs needed to help them make their turn. Higher lighting levels are usually not a problem with municipalities because the additional lighting enhances entrance safety and reduces accidents.


• Glare Control - Glare control at your entrance is often an overlooked problem. Too much light, or glare, will make it difficult for people’s eyes to adjust as they move between low, street-level lighting and higher levels of site lights. This contrast causes people to run over curbs and medians and increases vehicle and pedestrian hits. The key is to maintain a good balance by controlling glare both beyond and within the entry boundaries.

Security Concerns

Do you have property where personal security is a problem? If so, provide security lighting so people can react to or avoid potential danger.

• Facial Recognition - Research shows that people are less likely to commit crimes if they know they can be readily identified. A good approach, therefore, is to provide vertical lighting that shines on people’s faces. When faces are lit, movement and facial features can be easily detected, even at a distance. When too little light falls on faces, a person’s decision to avoid or evade danger is compromised.

For an aesthetically pleasing, indirect lighting scheme that also fits the bill, try lighting trees and building facades so that these surfaces reflect light onto people. Another idea is to use reflective sidewalk or polished surfaces to minimize shadows and dark areas.

• Landscape and Shadows- Your parking lot is probably well landscaped with trees, bushes, and signs located at the ends of parking rows, between parking bays, and along pedestrian and vehicle lanes. During the day, they enhance aesthetics. At night they can create shadows and affect people’s perception of personal security.

To counteract this, coordinate your pole locations and mounting heights to the landscape. Consider how the mature spread of trees could create shadows and design to avoid this. Signs, mounded landscape islands, building walls, and snow piles can also create unlit areas that may intimidate your customers. Match the lighting to the task by identifying these areas, then counteract their effect with your lighting design.

Aesthetics

• Color - People have trouble finding their car when lamps with poor color rendition are used, walking right past their white car because it appears gray. Your lighting design must take this into consideration. Metal halide lamps, for example, provide good color rendition, while high pressure sodium are rated fair to poor in this category.


• Be a Good Neighbor!- A quality lighting design helps define the character of your site as well as that of the neighborhood. Eliminate upward lighting.

It wastes energy and contributes to night pollution. Control light spillover and glare, which may be undesirable or prohibited, by using cut-offs. And take aesthetics into consideration when you select the height, location, size, and shape of your poles. There are a wide variety of fixtures that make it easy to provide a community responsive design.

Summary

A good lighting design uses layered lighting, a concept that provides just the right amount of lighting and accents on key features.

This approach starts with street and pedestrian lighting at entrances and crosswalks. It continues as you highlight your destination spots (aisles, sidewalks, and your building). It provides downward lighting with good color rendition so that people’s faces and objects can be seen, shadows eliminated, and security enhanced. It lights special features to reveal their importance and information-giving value.

Remember, a nicely designed landscape can be a great asset to your business. Your lighting features should enhance, never conflict, with each other. To keep people shopping with you, your landscape should look as pleasing to people at night as it does during the day.

For more information on lighting contact us at 585-334-1310.

Portions of this article were written using excerpts from “Lighting for Parking Facilities”, published by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America.