Outdoor Lighting = Outdoor Safety

by Thomas Fryd

Keeping your home exterior well lit at night is a great safety practice, providing a number of benefits. Not only will it protect you from tripping over obstacles or other hazards, it also has the benefit of deterring would be thieves.

Automated outdoor lighting, also known as dusk-to-dawn lighting gives the impression to others that the homeowner is at home. A great choice for all-night lighting is to install LED garden lighting, which will save you money over standard lighting options. This is important whether you're at home or not. The two greatest deterrents to thieves are the possibility of being seen, making darkness their best friend, and even more so is the threat of the homeowner being home.

This is why a number of home robberies occur in broad daylight, as thieves trade off the comfort of darkness for the higher sense of security that stems from the owner not being home. From the statistics, you can clearly see that a darkened home at night is at the greatest risk of home robbery, as thieves can operate in the comfort of darkness while also knowing or at least suspecting that the owners are not home, or are at the very least asleep.

Outdoor lighting is also a great way to prevent accidents on your property, especially for households with children, where the possibility of toys and other small trinkets being strewn about the property is much greater. Even the tiniest, most innocent seeming object can have the effect of turning an ankle and causing a fall when undetected by the eye. Homes in northern regions will also benefit from outdoor lighting, making those patches of ice easily visible and not quite the threat they would be otherwise.

Area outdoor solar landscape lighting ensures that the homeowner can see the entirety of their property at all times, and imparts a great sense of security. While motion detectors that trigger lights can also be effective for avoiding injuries and possibly deterring thieves, they don't give the same sense of comfort that landscape lighting will provide at night, as they don't give the impression that the owner is at home, and in fact thieves may not even be aware of them until they're triggered. They also don't allow you to see what's happening on your property if a noise alerts you to something happening outside your home.

Convincing other neighbours to also switch to outdoor area lighting can have the effect of brightening up your entire street and making it a safe haven during even the darkest of nights.

Thomas Fryd shares his vast knowledge at http://www.plant-care.com/. For your information there is much more on the topic of landscape lights.