In many parts of the country, and at varying times of year, playing recreational tennis โ and to an increasing extent pickleball โ at night may be preferable to playing during the day. Conditions may be cooler and less humid. Court availability might be more relaxed. And some might prefer the evenness of artificial lighting to the ever-changing angles of an intense sun.
Thatโs if the lighting is designed properly.
The art of illuminating park-based courts for tennis, pickleball and pick-up basketball, as well as walking/jogging/biking paths, is a bit different than throwing light behind second base on a baseball diamond or between the hashmarks of a football field.
โWhen youโre talking lighting a big stadium, you have 50-, 60-, sometimes up to 100-foot poles, and there are big, heavy, 60-pound floodlights, and youโre putting them up on a master arm using cranes. Itโs a big endeavor,โ says Ben Peirick, senior project manager for outdoor lighting at LSI Industries. โNow, a rec softball or soccer field that you want to light up for nighttime use, youโll use a similar fixture, but itโs still 30, 50 feet in the air with a big flood. When you get into court lighting, itโs just such a smaller-scale thing.โ
How small? LSI employs the same type of light poles it uses on parking lots when the company designs lighting for a parkโs hard playing surfaces. โBut the big difference is the optic that goes over the LED, because an LED by itself is just going to give you a round blob of light,โ Peirick says. โWith lighting, itโs all about what you do with that. When you go buy a light bulb from Home Depot, you look at the lumens and the watts, but thatโs really about it. Outdoors, thereโs way more to it than just how much light youโre putting out. Itโs where it goes. With shielding and optics, weโre able to redirect the majority of that light to exactly where we want it to go, which is a big deal.
โPeople seeing the light source and spill-light on their property is a big issue in court lighting, because the courts tend to be right smack dab in the middle of residential areas, so you donโt want to just take any old light and slap it on there.โ
To that end, LSI engineers teamed with an outside firm to design a custom optic just for court lighting. Peirick says the technology has โgotten so goodโ that precision-molded pieces of silicone, acrylic and polycarbonate over a fixtureโs lens create reflection and refraction capable of bending light in specific patterns. And heโs not alone in that assessment.
โThe nice thing about LED is you can get much better control of your light with the proper optics,โ says Nick Page, vice president of design and technical support at lighting manufacturer Qualite. โWhat weโve done, especially since weโre lighting more of these smaller areas like basketball and pickleball, is weโve created some wider beam types that still have the sharp cutoff on the edges and in the front. The main beam is wider than what we would normally use to throw quite a distance out to the center of a baseball field or a larger soccer or football field, where typically your pole setbacks start at least 30 feet back โ and itโs not uncommon for them to be quite a bit more than that if thereโs a track involved. Itโs all about the optics and then the wattage of the fixture.โ
Because, as Peirick points out, municipal park boundaries often abut backyards, lighting court surfaces and little else is critical to keeping homeowners happy. โImagine a pole right on the side of the court,โ he says. โWe can have 50 to 100 foot-candles โ which is very bright, like youโd expect a court or an auto dealershipโs front row to look like โ and then 10 feet behind that pole, where there might be a neighborโs yard, there can be virtually zero โ basically moonlight kind of light levels. If there were no optic over it, the LED would throw half the light onto the court and half into the neighborโs yard.โ
Photo courtesy of QualiteLight level
How bright is just right for nighttime recreational activity?
โA professional tennis stadium might want 100 foot-candles, which is really bright, but a rec court can be okay with 30 to 50 โ a third to half that light level,โ Peirick says. โNow, the other thing thatโs probably more important, though, is the uniformity, meaning the brightest spot to the dimmest spot. Generally, if youโre televising, you want it well under two-to-one, where the brightest spot on the court is going to be less than twice as bright as the dimmest spot. If itโs less than two-to-one, your eye really canโt tell. Itโll just look completely uniform. On a rec court, you may let it slip to three-to-one or four-to-one, to the point where youโre barely starting to notice differences in the light levels. Itโs the combination of the two, and that way the poles can be spaced apart a little farther, which would allow you to do it on a lower budget and with less energy consumption.โ
Pickleballโs lighting requirements are less stringent than tennis, and outdoor basketball lesser still. โA rule of thumb that somewhat dictates the light level is the size of the ball for that sport and also the speed the ball is moving,โ Peirick says. โWith basketball, you can probably get away with lower light levels. And in general, theyโre all rec courts anyway. Weโve done a few really nice outdoor basketball courts that are kind of show pieces, but usually itโs just for rec sports โ casual people playing at night โ and the light levels can be a little lower.โ
Photo courtesy of QualitePole placement
Tennis courts typically will be lined lengthwise by three light poles on each side โ just inside both baselines and beside the net. โPlacement of the lights is very important,โ says Shahil Amin, sales VP at AEON, another lighting manufacturer. โYouโre going to strategically place the lights to achieve that level of foot-candle, and then you want to angle them in such a way that if someone is throwing a ball up to serve you donโt want the player to be blinded by the light.โ
โGenerally, theyโre to the sides of each player,โ Peirick says of pole location. โYouโre rarely ever looking up to the right or up to the left. If youโre looking up, itโs generally straightforward. So, itโs rare you get any interference from the lighting. They donโt really come into play.โ
The concept is similar for pickleball, but with poles only at the four corners of the smaller court and not over the net at all. However, on courts converted from tennis to pickleball, all six poles can still be used to light the latter activity. โTennis has much more stringent lighting criteria than pickleball,โ Page says. โIf you already have tennis-type lighting, then you should be good for pickleball, as long as itโs being played in the same direction.โ
According to Page, such conversions are becoming a greater part of Qualiteโs business. โThe year before last, I donโt know if I did a pickleball court design at all, but we did a significant amount in 2022, and Iโm still doing a significant amount,โ he says, adding, โThe majority of them that we see are dedicated pickleball courts. Theyโll take a tennis court, theyโll convert it into two pickleball courts, and then that court is never used for tennis again.โ
For recreation complexes that accommodate multiple tennis courts, pickleball courts or both, the lighting design gets more โ well โ complex. โTwo things are going to happen,โ Page says. โYouโre going to have additional polls, because on each court youโre going to want light coming from all four directions. Then youโre shooting farther distances, so you want to make sure that your mounting height is high enough to keep your aiming angles down. We try to keep our aiming angles 60 degrees at max above what we call nadir โ straight down.โ
Rendering courtesy of LSI IndustriesPath safety and security
With no moving balls involved, the lighting of walking/jogging/biking paths requires the least amount of lighting of all.
โIt doesnโt take a lot of light โ really a couple foot-candles โ but you need to watch out for shadowing,โ Page says. โIf there are obstacles or trees, you need to make sure that you consider luminaire placement so that youโre not creating shadows. Thatโs it โ adequate light and reduction of shadows.โ
โLighting is always going to come down to the level of foot-candles first,โ Amin says. โSo, if they say, โWe have a path that stretches a mile, and we want this portion to be lit up to this level, and then when you walk a little bit farther, itโs a little bit less,โ it really comes down to the design. Thereโs software that we use that shows us, okay, we need to put X number of fixtures at this height to achieve this level of illumination for this particular client on this path. The basis of any lighting design is always going to come around to, well, how much light do they want and where do they want it? And then you can get into the specifics of controls and timers. Do they want wireless lighting controls? Do they want to set it up where itโs on a schedule โ where from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. it automatically turns on and itโs Monday through Friday, or seven days a week?โ
The goal, of course, is to keep users safe from potential hazards or nefarious actors. โThere are two things when youโre trying to deter crime or just accidents in general,โ says Peirick. โFor parking lot and pathway lighting, you want plenty of light where thereโs a rock or a pothole or some sort of trip hazard, so even a 60- or 70-year-old person can see it. Obviously, the older we get, the worse we see at night, so lighting generally takes into account the worst-case scenario, and you make sure thereโs enough light on the ground to avoid trip hazards. But then thereโs a second part, which is the vertical aspect of light. You want to make sure thereโs enough light on peopleโs faces so you can identify them. The biggest thing in crime deterrence is being able to see someoneโs face. You see them coming and see if theyโre a threat or not.โ
For that reason, the strict light control around courts is not as critical along pathways. โYou donโt want to light up just the path. You can light up all around it, and that tends to be a little more of a safe-feeling environment,โ Peirick says. โIn that sense, you throw the light a little more and in a wider path versus at the side of a court, where you might have a neighborโs backyard to contend with. If youโre inside the park and youโre throwing light for security reasons, you donโt really need to cut it off in any particular direction. If thereโs light spilling into the grass, thatโs not necessarily a bad thing.โ
Uniformity, too, is less of an issue. Whereas recreational court lighting may require at worst a three-to-one brightest-to-dimmest ratio, with paths โtypically it goes to 10- or 15- or 20-to-one,โ Peirick says.
โBut to be sure,โ he continues, โyou do a lighting layout. We have software that will calculate it all for you and tell you where all the poles need to go and what spacing you can have so you donโt have great dark spots along the pathway. Because youโre talking one to five foot-candles, you can generally space product out. If you have 10-foot poles, having them every 40 to 60 feet is usually a rough rule of thumb you can go by.โ
Between technologically advanced hardware and todayโs design software, lighting manufacturers are helping municipalities meet their constituentsโ needs during more hours of every day. Even at night, park usage can be seen as safe and satisfying with the right amount of light in the right places.
Bright Futures
Thereโs good reason to illuminate public courts for tennis and pickleball play, as participation in each sport continues to rise.
The United States Tennis Association announced in January that the number of American tennis players grew by 1 million to 23.6 million in 2022, the third consecutive year that the sport has seen a participation increase.
Moreover, the USTA worked with more than 100 facilities across the country last year, providing technical assistance to build or refurbish courts at public parks and tennis facilities. These efforts represented more than 585 courts completed, with an impact of more than $50 million in tennis infrastructure. Finally, the first-ever โTennis and Pickleball Statement of Guidance,โ developed with park professionals and court contractors, detailed ways that public parks could most efficiently, economically and effectively incorporate the growth of both tennis and pickleball within their communities.
AB Show attendees toured the USTA National Campus near Orlando, Fla., last year and when it opened in 2016. Each tour was sponsored by Musco Sports Lighting, which handled the facilityโs lighting design.
And what about pickleball, the activity consistently touted as the fastest-growing sport in the U.S.?
In February, USA Pickleball released its own annual growth report, which revealed its membership had increased nearly 30 percent in 2022 over 2021 โ from 53,110 to nearly 69,000. Meanwhile, the number of pickleball courts in this country jumped from 38,140 to 44,094 โ a 15.6 percent increase.