Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

Outdoor lighting with good coverage of your driveway and walkways is important, not simply to keep from tripping on the porch steps on your way to the door after dark, but for home security purposes as well. Burglars would rather work in shady nooks rather than exposed lighted areas. You don’t necessarily need to get the brightest floodlights on the market though: night-sky-friendly lighting works perfectly well.

What is “night-sky-friendly light”, you may ask.

These outdoor lights don’t waste energy shining into the night sky or in other directions than you where you want the illumination (i.e. not into the street or a neighbor’s yard). Typically these outdoor lamps direct light downward and only at the area that needs to be illuminated. They accomplish this via shields and other “cutoff features” that block light from escaping to the sides or the sky above.

Some of the benefits of installing night-sky-friendly lighting can be:

• an enhanced view for stargazers
• lower energy requirements (so a financial savings)
• a better night’s sleep (no bright lights shining in your bedroom window, thank you very much)
• less disruption of wildlife (artificial lights can disorient migrating birds and many nocturnal animals)

Night-sky-friendly lights need not look funky or odd in your landscape either. In many cases, you can’t even tell the difference until the sun goes down and the lights come on.

The night-sky-friendly wall sconce shown below is one of several types of outdoor lighting available through Starry Night Lights.