Guest Blogger: Safe Halloween Lighting for your Home & Walkways

Guest Blog Entry #27, Entry #306, October 20, 2010

Halloween is less than two weeks away and the safety of your home’s walkway, garage, and front entry are important.

Paul R. Gosselin, Sr. CLVLT

Today, I welcome Paul Gosselin from NightScenes Landscape Lighting Professionals he explains how walkway lighting is important for children safety at Halloween. This topic is so important for parents, and home owners trying to ensure the holiday is safe for all!

Lighting the Way for Those Little Monsters

Ah, those little ghosts, goblins and assorted other monsters will be coming around soon looking to score some goodies from their neighbors.   We don’t want them getting hurt in their search for eye of newt or maybe some dragon tails so let’s make sure that they can move around your home safely.

Of course we all know that if you are expecting those trick or treaters, to show up and you want them to stop in, you need to leave your front porch light on.  This is the signal to the keepers of the monsters (parents) that it is safe to approach and pick up some toad stools.  But what about getting to and from the front porch?

A vital element in choosing your fixtures to light a path, sidewalk or driveway is to avoid glare. We are all familiar with glare – the driver on the road who fails to dim his bright lights makes us victims of glare. A fixture that exposes the source of the light (the light bulb or lamp) allows that light to shine into the eyes, almost blinding the traveler. Our eyes are naturally drawn to the spot of light instead of the path, making such a “glare bomb” more of a hazard than no light at all. A tiered pagoda light is one example of a poorly constructed fixture for this purpose.

Ensure your walkways are well lit

Another poor choice is the solar path light. With its commonly seen dim bluish hue, these units are more of a marker than an actual illuminator. Not that marking the trail isn’t a good way to know where it is – but they offer so little actual light that you could actually stumble over the tricycle left out on the path to your door. It is also true that on cloudy days (which are common in the late fall and winter), the fixture will not be able to collect enough solar energy to operate the light when the sun goes down. When considering safety features for your home, you will expect it to function 100% every night.

We also do not recommend the use of the over-bright flood lights that can be mounted on the corner of your home. Glare shields are available for such lights to keep the light from blinding you on the walkway, but the fixtures themselves tend to be big and ugly. With so many other attractive choices for good path illumination, it’s difficult to think of flood lights as an effective option but if this is what you have, go with it for this ghoulish night.

Ensure house lighting is on and clear

So, what do you really need to move around your home safely at night? You need a fixture approximately 20” tall that has a cover eliminating glare from the light source, sometimes called a China Hat fixture. The light should be spread onto the ground lighting your way, not your eyes. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, you can find this kind of fixture at the local home improvement store, though usually not in the box kits. You will want to buy metallic fixtures, avoiding plastic at all costs!  Plastic fixtures disintegrate pretty quickly. Installing your fixtures in a staggered fashion will be more attractive than the predictable “runway” approach.

Lighting for safety means highlighting steps and paths, changes in elevation or obstacles. Remember that glare is your enemy; but a soft spread of moonlight on your walkway makes for safer stepping around your home or in this case, your mad scientist laboratory.

For more Halloween ideas on Stagetecture, click here.