I’ve heard 2 schools of thought concerning lighting the outside of your house and yard. One is that bright lights discourage criminals who would come on your property to rob you, vandalize, or wreak havoc in various nefarious ways. The other is that if your property is dark, a criminal would have to use a flashlight to get around, thereby making it obvious that someone is in the yard or trying to get into the house. I guess the third option is motion-detecting lights, although we found that passing deer could set them off.
I, for one, don’t like lighting my yard unless we’re outside doing something. I’ll leave a porch light or the driveway light on if we’re expecting visitors after dark, but other than that, it’s lights out. The house we’re in now and one we bought back in 1990 had large streetlights in the yards that came on at night and went off after sunrise. We got rid of them at both places (only to have the neighbor at the first place replace one in his yard, shining in 2 of our bedrooms.)
As you have figured out, I’m not a fan of security lighting. I like it to be dark at night. I don’t want to hang blackout curtains in my bedrooms. I don’t want my electric bill to go up. And I don’t want to subject my neighbors to nightlights either.
Do you have outdoor security lights? Do you want them? Love them? Hate them? Do share…
I use motion/light sensors. The bulbs last a long time that way. I doubt thieves care whether there is light or not. They wouldn’t use a flashlight anywhere it could be seen if they know what they’re doing.
Deer-triggering is one of those things that would mess with my head if I was home alone and all of a sudden, the lights outside went on. I would be forced to get up out of my comfy recliner to look out the window, all the while not knowing if a knife-wielding psycho was going to break the door down… OK, maybe that’s a little over the top.
But I don’t see the need for motion sensor lights outside our house. The garage light comes on when we open the garage door, and if we need more light, the switches are in the garage or just inside the kitchen door. We have yet to deal with unexpected night visitors - people who want to save our souls only come around in daylight.
FWIW, we do have motion detector switches in our basement stairwell, and I love them lots and lots. But I don’t think we need them outside.
Our neighbor’s lights seriously annoy me. The motion-detectors are worse, because a light that comes and goes is worse than a steady light.
We don’t have any. Our house is easily visible from all sides (we live on the corner) and we have have a big, loud dog. We’re not a good target for burglars.
If you have that much anxiety you probably need a panic button to sound an alarm and not rely on the lights. I can understand it though. My elderly mother lives alone and worries about these things. But I pity the criminal who breaks into her house and has to listen to her berate him about the terrible job he’s doing.
I live alone and I don’t have security lights. I’m in the country and I love to be able to look up at the night sky and see a million starts. My neighbor put up one of those mercury vapor yard lights and I hate it because it makes the sky less bright (even though it’s 1500 ft away). I don’t fear for my safety - I let the dogs patrol the fenced in yard.
I don’t like motion detector lights, they are annoying with their on-off behavior, false triggering, all of a sudden bring light in the face at night, and the sometimes uneasy feeling that someone who shouldn’t be there is what set it off.
For bright outside lighting I simply want to be able to turn it off or on, maybe dim it as a nice but unneeded bonus, auto-sense darkness and turn on/off automatically - not too fond of if it’s a bright light. But allowing it to decide totally on it’s own if it should turn on in the middle of the night, not for me.
For dim lighting, enough to see pathways and door locks my preference is autosensing darkness and turn on for the night, or for a set # of hours after dark along with the ability to turn it on or off manually.
I do have one fixture also that I use a very low wattage CF bulb in it, I think it’s 3 watts, that I just let run 24/7 The power savings to get a darkness sensor is just not worth it compared to leaving it on forever.
I have heard the theory that security lights are counterproductive because they create dark shadows where it is easier for people to hide (as your eyes will be blinded to some extent by the light, so any shaded areas will appear even darker).
I don’t have any security lights, just a courtesy light outside by the front door that I leave on if I’m expecting guests after dark, so they don’t trip over on the path. Quite a few neighbours have those motion-sensitive lights, which seem to go off all the time whenever a cat or fox goes by.
That’s one of the best solutions, but unfortunately not possible for everyone. Blackjack has one bark that translates roughly to “I’m going to bite off your head and shit down your throat”. He wonders why people don’t want to play with him. But I have no concerns about someone breaking into the house. He and the other dogs in the neighborhood will join into an alert sounded by any of them, so the whole area is protected.
I have dogs, so that affects my POV – I’m in the security lights are bad camp because my place is a bit bigger and if the dogs are barking at something, I want to be able to move around the farm without triggering lights to let the “intruder” know where I’m at. But with about 200 pounds of dog running on the farm, I rarely get intruders bigger than the average raccoon.
Enkel - I have a Doberman, 2 German Shepherds, a giant schnauzer, a standard poodle, and an English setter (he’s not much of a watchdog, though). I don’t think too much about prowlers.
Nah, I don’t have serious anxiety. But when my husband has to travel, it seems the normal house noises are louder or weirder, and I really don’t want random lights adding to the sense of weird. Having been home alone when a big branch knocked off the corner of the roof at the garage, I’ve dealt with the loud and unusual. I’ve also dealt with the silence of a furnace that doesn’t come on because I neglected to order heating oil… :eek: But I digress.
I’m not a nervous Nelly and I have no desire to have an alarm system or a dog or motion sensor lights. I like the dark just fine. And I see a number of you feel the same way about outside lights.
**Bridget **- I’m going to have to rewatch that episode now…
I’m also ambivalent on outside lights. We’ve had prowlers in our neighborhood who get into the backyards and from there into the house through the patio doors. We have high walls/fences around the yards, and lots of mature landscaping so it’s a bad guy’s paradise. And our police department no longer responds to burglar alarms or calls (unless there’s a personal safety issue, and they’re really slow on those).
We do have a motion sensing light by the garbage cans, which are also next to the more or less non-functioning gate to the backyard, but there are still lots of really good dark hiding places elsewhere in the yard that I’m thinking about. The three beagles are pretty loud, but they’re absolutely useless in any real situation that doesn’t involve squirrels or mice. Make that baby squirrels or mice.
I’m in the stealth crowd also - I prefer not to give away my own position with sensor lights and I like the dark anyway. Maybe I need to trade in the beagles for some more formidable doggie security.
Yeah, I’d say that pack of yours would be quite adequate security.
Being a renter, I don’t really have a vote. Outside lights in my building are on timers, I had to resort to heavy curtains in the bedroom to deal with parking lot lights coming in around the blinds.
Has everyone [well…not everyone] lost their senses?Mercury vapor lamps making private homes look like stalag 17.Really?Are americans all that afraid?I have never locked my front door,and I am 61.motion detector lights.Humbug!Be really safe.Think infrared.Or better yet,lasers!!!I like to look up at the stars.Put your gadgets in your abode.Leave the outdoors to the night.
FCM - head over to your neighborly Costco, Sams or BJs and check out the Home Security Camera systems. They are pretty inexpensive these days (starting 'round $300 last I looked) and you can check them out over your home computer or even the internet at work!
The cameras themselves act as a great deterrent, you can backtrack the recorder for days if you notice something out of whack, and you will always be able to answer “what the hell just happened / is happening?”
I have a system and it has been a real great way to know that really, there’s nothing to worry about…
My neighbor had motion sensor lights and I hated them. Every time I walked out onto my deck her spotlight came on, so no possibility for me to actually enjoy my own deck in the dark. Plus, in all those years of the light coming on, she never seemed to notice anything was going on. I could have been a thief in her yard and the lights wouldn’t have helped except to provide light for me. Like car alarms, these things are sold with the implication that they do something useful but they just annoy innocent people.
I like motion sensing lights, properly aimed. If they are coming on nightly then adjustment or rethinking is needed.
At my old house I knew when my back deck motion light came on it meant there was a racoon, possum, or fox coming after my trash. I’d go over to the glass back door and watch.
I hate constantly on outside lights, to me the night should be dark, very dark.
