7 Tips for Choosing a Street Floodlight

Operating conditions

The first thing you need to decide before choosing a spotlight for your home is what it will be used for. This decision will affect all the below listed parameters: power, type of lamps, design features, etc. In everyday life, the need for searchlights arises for three reasons: construction is underway, it is necessary to give the landscape design a more original look or simply need to make security lighting on the street.

As for construction, it is necessary to choose a luminaire with a bright directional light flux for it. The glow must be monochrome( no play of colors here is appropriate).For decorative street lighting, RGB floodlights are suitable, which with the help of additional devices can smoothly change their glow and make a beautiful night view of the countryside. For protection, you need to select devices with a motion sensor, directional, but not too bright glow.

Type of lamp

The second, no less important stage of choice is to determine the type of light source. To date, the projectors can be LED, halogen, metal halide and sodium. Each option has its own advantages, which we now consider.

LED

The first and most modern version - LED devices. Behind the LEDs is the future, so here it is necessary to dwell in more detail.

Among the advantages of such devices are:

• low power consumption;
• long service life( over 50 thousand hours);
• vibration resistance;
• high degree of protection IP;
• can be used at temperatures from -30 to + 40 ° C( there are models with an even larger range);
• have an unlimited resource of on / off.

And this is not a complete list of the advantages of LED spotlights. As for the shortcomings, it is one - the high cost of LED products.

Halogen

The second most popular are halogen lamps. Their advantage is in low price and high color rendering. As for the shortcomings, the main ones are a short service life( not more than 4000 hours) and strong heating during long operation( it is impossible to touch the housing without gloves).

Many ask questions about what type of spotlight is better to choose for lighting the yard - halogen or LED.We recommend that in the presence of money, give preference to a more modern version, becauseThis lamp pays off very quickly and at the same time it will serve for more than 10 years.

Metal halide

Next on the list are metal halide floodlights for lighting. Inside such devices, a gas discharge lamp is installed, which has a high luminous efficiency. Metal halide lamps have a bright cold glow, which is suitable for construction or for the area where you need to take care of good lighting. Another advantage of choosing this option is high reliability and resistance to voltage drops.

Sodium

Well, the last option - sodium searchlights. For lighting in such devices, sodium gas-discharge lamps are used. The disadvantage of such light sources is a weak color rendition, so they are often used to illuminate the perimeter of buildings and those areas where special requirements are not made according to the brightness of the glow. The advantage of choosing sodium searchlights is their versatility - you can easily replace the type of light source with another.

With the types of lamps figured out. I would like in favor of LED devices to provide some more facts. First, all other alternative variants are unstable to vibrations and can fail when it appears. Secondly, LEDs, unlike gas-discharge lamps, do not harm the environment, so they can be disposed of in an ordinary waste bin. Thirdly, diodes are much stronger than their competitors and can withstand minor mechanical damages, which are not uncommon for the street.

Power

To tell about how to choose a power searchlight is not so simple. It depends on exactly where you will use the lamp, how far the rays should reach, and what area of ​​the area should be illuminated. All these parameters are strictly individual, therefore, in order to choose the most suitable option for certain conditions, you need to accurately determine its purpose.

If you want to pick up a spotlight to illuminate the house on the street( porch), it is enough to choose an LED option with a power of about 30 watts. At the same time, a halogen lamp for the same conditions should have a power of about 300 watts, or even more. Even by this comparison, we can say that LEDs significantly save electricity and at the same time have the same performance.

courtyard Additional features of the

Above we examined the main criteria that will allow you to select the right streetlight, but that's not all you need to know. Modern lighting fixtures can be equipped with additional functions that you might find useful, and which you may not even know about.

So, when choosing, pay attention to the following nuances:

1. The projector can be stationary or mobile. In the latter case, the device has a movable attachment and a handle, which is convenient for transferring from place to place. This option is recommended to choose if you started construction in the country or decided to make a temporary highlight of an object.
2. The degree of protection against moisture and dust( marked with IP letters) must be at least 65 if the application is outdoors. Ideally, you must choose the maximum possible protection - IP 68, to be sure of the normal functioning of the device. I would also like to add - if you decided to hang up the spotlight to illuminate the site, be sure to place it under the roof visor or under a different kind of protection. In this case, you will additionally protect the case from atmospheric precipitation and wind, which are the main pests.
3. Reasonable idea is to choose a lamp, which is additionally equipped with a motion sensor and a photo relay. In this case, the light will turn on only for two reasons: the street is dark or the IR rays have detected a human movement in the area of ​​action. These two additions make it possible to significantly save electricity and make lighting autonomous.
4. The LED spotlight for home can have one powerful LED or matrix. The last type of performance we do not recommend to choose, becauseThe matrix is ​​faster heated and has a smaller light output.
5. The housing of the luminaire must be an aluminum or an alloy with this metal. If you see a plastic lamp in the store to illuminate the territory, bypass it. The reason is that such an embodiment will not withstand mechanical damage and high temperatures, as a result of which it will quickly fail.
6. There are devices that run on battery power. This option is recommended to choose if there is a temporary illumination of the territory or there are cases of power outages on the site.
7. Strangely enough, its shape can depend on the shape of the luminaire. For example, a square shape is suitable for uniform illumination of a large area. Round projectors have a directional luminous flux, and linear ones are suitable for illumination of the pool and facades of buildings.

By the way, you can save money and make a searchlight with your own hands. One of the examples of assembly we recommend you to view:

That's all I wanted to tell you about how to choose the right spotlight for the street. We hope that the information was useful and interesting for you. Once again, it's better to put LED lighting, which will allow faster recouping of the device.

Related materials:

• How to make a LED spotlight with your own hands
• How to connect a motion sensor to lighting
• Original lighting ideas for a suburban area