Some people may consider outdoor street lighting as an exclusively of municipal and civil engineering public service. After all, the most prominent outdoor street lights in any community are the ones that line public roadways. These light poles and fixtures are installed by the city government and are considered one of many elements of urban design and development. Nevertheless, a significant portion of the total outdoor street lights and parking lot lights in any given city stand on exclusive establishments, homeowner’s associations, and private estates. These lights are intended to perform a combination of important tasks. They add character and decorum to architectural lighting. They add a layer of security lighting along an otherwise concealed and obscured access point, and they provide motorists and pedestrians with visibility and safe passage.
Private Driveways in Front of Large Custom Homes
Homes over 5,000 square feet have become quite common in certain parts of Houston, Beaumont, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas. Large homes like this normally rest either on a section of land, or they reside along a private drive guarded by a gated entrance. In either case, outdoor street lights and architectural outdoor lighting are necessary to provide clear visibility along the street. If there is a thick wooded area on either side of the street, outdoor lights also help bring out the natural beauty of the trees and dispel any shadows that could pose a security risk for home invasion.
Normally Illuminations Lighting and Design uses highly decorative outdoor street lighting poles and fixtures for private drives. Because a person’s home is a sanctuary and an embodiment of personal lifestyle, we take a great deal of time going over options with our clients to ensure full satisfaction with the appearance of the poles and fixtures.
Country Club Entrances
The clubhouse normally resides at some distance from the front entrance, far removed from the street. The intent here is clear. By removing the clubhouse somewhat from the surrounding community, the establishment creates a sense of separation and refinement. As a consequence, however, the driveway leading up to the clubhouse tends to be rather long, and it often winds in a serpentine pattern to create the illusion of an even greater distance in transit, and an even greater sense of removal from mundane life.
Outdoor Street lighting here may need to be as bright as it is on nearby public roads without looking the same as public street lights. Again, this requires access to special decorative poles and fixtures that distinguish the property and elevate the evening with a sense of the sublime. ILD has had a great deal of experience in the Houston area lighting country clubs landscapes, streets, and entryways for clients such as Houston Country Club, River Oaks Country Club, and Carlton Woods Country Club.
Hotels and Resorts
Hotels and resorts require much the same eclectic approach to outdoor street lighting as do country clubs. The atmosphere created by professional landscape lighting designers may significantly differ, however, according to the nature and theme of the facility. More traditional settings may require the same formality and elegance required to effectively illuminate the exterior entryways to a country club. More exotic locations or places intended as hotspots of excitement for travelers, conventioneers, and vacationing families, need an element of excitement to create a sense of energy and forward motion that carries a person into a different perception of reality.
Such complex aesthetics require both creativity and a simultaneous, practical awareness of local dark sky laws that regulate light pollution and glare. Outdoor street lights around hotels and resorts must be carefully selected according to energy efficiency; glare and optical shielding designs, pole height, and fixture mount in order to generate the required level of foot-candles for the street and adjacent parking lot. Hotel lighting designers generate a photometric analysis of the entire property and determining the appropriate role outdoor street lights will play in the grand design.
One of the many benefits hospitality clients receive when they work with a multi-specialist hospitality lighting designer such as Illuminations in Houston, TX is the interdisciplinary blend of science and art that combine eclectic indoor lighting design with outdoor landscape and street lighting layers that work to unify architecture with the entire property and to distinguish the physical prominent of the location along the local nighttime sky.
Illuminations Lighting and Design installs outdoor street light poles and fixtures on commercial lighting projects locally throughout Texas for private residential homeowners and neighborhood associations. We work nationwide on a selective basis for country clubs, hotels, resorts, and theme parks.
Contact us today at 1-800-863-1184 to schedule and in-depth, no cost, and no obligation consultation or visit our lighting blog for helpful and informative lighting information.
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