When it comes to making your yard safer and more fun to spend time in at night, the best thing to do is install outdoor lights. But large outdoor lights can be big energy hogs – especially if you leave them on all night.
To start thinking about the best ways to use outdoor lights at your home, think about what you want them for. Some homeowners want to highlight the exterior of their house and landscaping; some want to light up areas like the porch and driveway that are used frequently in the evenings, and others want to illuminate an area to increase its safety. Of course, many want lights for all of these reasons, too.
Start by choosing the right fixture: an efficient one certified by Energy Star. The program certifies light fixtures for every part of your home, including the outdoors. Some of the Energy Star exterior models will also come with controls that turn off the bulb during daylight.
Features like this are the best way to save energy with your outdoor lights. Simply putting your lights on a regular light switch and remembering to turn them on and off every day is unlikely to be the best use of energy. Many homeowners leave their porch lights on, for example, when they run to the store, or when a teenager will be coming home late and the parents have already gone to sleep.
There are several devices that can help you light up your home more efficiently.
The first is a motion sensor, which automatically turns on the light when it senses movement and then turns it off within a few minutes. These are ideal for security-style lights and ones that shine on high-use areas like the porch and driveway. But with just a motion sensor, most lights will turn on whenever they sense motion – whether it’s daylight or not. In order to prevent that, the U.S. Department of Energy recommends combining a motion sensor with a photosensor, which tells your light whether or not it is daytime.
Photosensors are able to sense what the current lighting conditions are in your yard, which makes them useful for all outdoor lights. They are also a better option than a simple timer because the timer would have to be reset to allow for evenings that start later in summer and earlier in winter. Photosenors adjust for this seasonal variation automatically, by simply sensing the amount of light. They can be used in conjunction with a timer, though, so that the photosensor turns on the light at dusk and a timer turns off the light at a certain time of night, when you go to bed.
Whatever you choose, use something green to make your outdoors a bit brighter.
For ideas about what kind of outdoor lighting to use, try going to Lampsplus.com for some suggestions.
Source: BecauseAction.com
