Choosing the Right Outdoor Lighting for Your Business
Whether you’re building a new business, creating a new setting for an established one, or simply looking to revamp your storefront with outdoor lighting this spring, you have some serious choices ahead of you. Whitmer’s Lighting can help you choose and install your lighting solutions, but you definitely should spend some time thinking about what you need before you give us a call. Here’s a bit of advice on choosing the outdoor lighting that will work best for your business.
One of the first things that you need to think about is the purpose of your lighting system. If you’re located on a busy city street or in a plaza that is already well-lit as far as security lights, street lights, and parking lot lighting goes, then you probably need to focus more on highlighting your business so that people will notice it when they drive by at night. If, on the other hand, your business is isolated or in a dark area, it’s important that you blend the desire to be noticed with the need for better security lighting, which will make your business safer for your employees and customers and which will also help lessen your chances of having an after-hours break-in.
Lighting for security is fairly practical and straightforward. Your parking spaces, especially those where employees may be leaving their cars for long hours or where people will be walking to their vehicles after dark, should be as bright as you can make them without wasting too much energy or bothering your business’s residential neighbors. Here, efficiency is key, since large lights can suck a lot of energy and raise your electric bills by quite a bit. You’ll also want to ensure that the doorways and nooks and crannies of your building are well-lit so that there aren’t many shadows for potential thieves and other undesirables to hang out in.
The issue of lighting so that your business will be noticed is a totally different beast. Whitmer’s can definitely help you choose the best way to lay out outdoor lights so that people will notice your business from the road, but here are just a few places that you might consider placing lights.
If you have a large sign or billboard on the front of or in the front yard of your business, this should definitely be highlighted. It’s no good leading people to look at your business if they can’t even tell what it is, but lighting up your sign at night will let people know who you are and what you do. If you have pretty landscaping or a fountain, it’s also a good idea to light up these things, which will draw people’s eyes toward your business front. Ambient lighting that can still be seen from the nearest road is what you need to go for here. One excellent way, too, to set your business apart with outdoor lighting is to use subtle colors that will separate your business front from those of surrounding businesses.
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