Is your commercial landscape looking dim and deary after the sun goes down? Is it hard for visitors and staff to see when exiting your building every evening? So, let’s talk about outdoor lighting and enhancing your commercial landscaping.

Your exterior lighting can drastically influence your property’s safety, security and visual appeal. When plotted strategically, the right lighting can offer a multitude of benefits, both enhancing your professionalism and aiding visitors in navigating through otherwise hard-to-see conditions. 

Here are five simple yet highly impactful ways to enhance your commercial property’s outdoor lighting:

1. Illuminate Walking Paths with Outdoor Lighting

After the sun sets, it can be hard for visitors to clearly see sidewalks, gravel paths, and steps. Not only might someone accidentally veer off and step on your beautifully maintained garden beds, but— more importantly — blinded walkers can injure themselves. Even slight elevations or cracks in your path can be missed, resulting in twisted ankles or stubbed toes. Other trip and fall incidents could lead to more drastic injuries. 

Not only is a lighted path important for safety, but illuminating your walkways is also crucial for increasing your property’s security. We’ve helped universities dramatically improve their campus safety for late-night students by accentuating clear escape routes to flee from bad actors, office complexes to brighten up exit paths to avoid criminal activity after business hours and more.

What you can do: Line walking trails with pathway lights — even better if they’re eco-friendly or solar powered!— or add overhead light posts to shine on sidewalks, steps and areas where visitors may be walking in the dark.

2. Clearly Denote Entrances/Exits With Outdoor Lighting

Your visitors need to know where to get into your business, and once they are stepping out, where to go to get back to their car. That’s why it’s crucial to devote special attention to your doorways, illuminating them more brightly than anything else on your property. 

Your entrances are also prime spots for break-ins, and it’s important to be able to clearly see faces on your security cameras and to discourage bad actors from entering locked doors with the right exterior lighting.  

What you can do: Add light posts on either side of your doors or strong overhead flood lighting to highlight your entrances and exits. This applies to lighting your entrances and exits to parking lots, garages or all other spaces where visitors must enter/exit as well.

3. Opt for High-Powered, Minimalistic Lighting Wherever Fit

In our post about Landscape Trends for 2020, we talk about how this is the year for “fewer, stronger lights.” Minimalism is on the rise not just indoors, but out— and more and more people are attracted to less cluttered exterior spaces.

While dim lighting can certainly look good under the right conditions— setting an intimate atmosphere and mood— think of ways that you can reduce the sheer number of lights you have with more compact, fewer options. 

What you can do: Select landscape lights that shine brightly on high-trafficked areas and fixtures that aren’t bulky. Think “timeless:” a long-lasting frame that won’t date itself too quickly and uses efficient yet powerful LED bulbs for increased exposure. LEDs use at least 75% less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent lighting, according to Energy.gov.

4. Choose Motion-Activated Outdoor Lighting to Save Energy

Automatic lights only turn on when motion is detected within a certain range. These motion-activated lights are great energy savers, helping you to reduce electrical costs while still helping pedestrians to see where they’re going. 

We recommend accompanying motion lights with other already lit features, as to not surprise or shock visitors when activated. These complementary flood lights can help to eliminate any shadows, acting as “helper” lights to enhance your already lit areas.

What you can do: Consult a landscape professional on places to incorporate motion-activated lights in conjunction with your permanently lit night lights to reduce your energy footprint.

5. Dimly Showcase Your Foliage & Signage

You invest a lot of time and money into creating an attractive landscaping design for visitors. Show off your flora, vegetation and trees with some soft, accent lighting. These gently highlighted spots can easily increase your curb appeal from afar and accentuate your fine landscaping for late night visitors, subconsciously exuding your businesses’ wellbeing. 

Even if your establishment doesn’t operate after dark, it’s always nice to light up your signage, acting as an advertisement around the clock. 

What you can do: Place small lights amongst your garden beds, greenery and along the interior of your planter areas to softly illuminate your foliage. Don’t forget to add a spotlight beneath your property’s prized tree and in front of your signage too. 

Trust the Landscape Professionals

Plotting the right outdoor lighting planning is an art, one to trust in the hands of an experienced landscape designer. 

Our team at C. Caramanico & Sons, Inc. is here to brighten up your commercial property with a few simple yet profound lighting additions or alterations. 

Request your commercial property assessment and we’ll propose a lighting plan you’ll be sure to love.