Friday, January 24, 2014

Great parking lot and terrible stair lighting

On a recent evening in Dresden, I noticed some great area lighting in a mall parking lot. As you can see below, the visibility in the parking lot is excellent.


In this closeup focused on the luminaires you can see that these types of lamps send almost no light directly up into the sky and are not at all glaring. Why isn't every parking lot in the world lit like this? Beats me...

Parking lot lighting (closeup) by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Of course, it's impossible to tell by eye how bright it is. It's possible that these lamps are putting out more light than is necessary. It's also possible that they should have a warmer color. Regardless of whether these lamps were perfect or not, it's clear that they are excellent compared to the typical parking lot!

While I was visiting Dresden, I also noticed another example of how additional light can make your vision worse:

Dangerous lighting 1 by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This lamp is intended to help people see, but it's right next to a stairway that is completely unlit due to bad positioning of the lamp! You can see how invisible the stairway is in these two photos from roughly the same angle:

Dangerous lighting 2 by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


In this case, you would actually be better of if the lamp wasn't there, and you were just navigating by artificial skyglow or moonlight.

Finally, a little contest. Comparing the last two photos, can you spot another lighting problem? Answer in the comments.

4 comments:

  1. The lighting in the first photo is a perfect example of how a well-lit parking lot should be. In my opinion, that should be the standard level of visibility, as not all drivers could easily adjust to the dark. Aside from that, I noticed that it’s also neat and spacious – great example, indeed!

    Andrew Muller @ Parking Lot Services

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment Andrew,

      You might also be interested in the 3rd to last example from the USA on this page (Wells Fargo bank): http://lossofthenight.blogspot.de/2014/04/lighting-in-durham-nc.html

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    2. The lights over the writing on the wall, in the last two pictures, are on in the daylight and off at night.

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