How LED Wall Pack Lights Prevent Light Pollution

Light pollution is a global issue caused by the overuse of artificial lights at night. Man-made, commercial lights like streetlamps and flood lights brighten the night sky unnaturally. This disrupts environmental patterns for humans, wildlife, and plants. Light pollution affects cycles like circadian rhythm, animal migration, and plant fruition, delaying or even halting these processes.

Light Pollution Solutions

Luckily, by reducing how much artificial light escapes into the sky at night, light pollution is reversible. Modern lighting solutions and dark sky compliance standards are now actively helping outdoor lights prevent light pollution.

The three main preventions against light pollution are:

Blocked upward light spill
Minimized light usage
Lower bulb wattage and warmer color temperatures

By implementing all three of these things, outdoor lighting designers are actively decreasing light pollution in cities.

Benefits of Wall Packs

Some of the best outdoor lighting fixtures that limit light pollution are wall packs. Wall packs mount on the exterior walls of buildings to illuminate entryways, parking lots, and other surrounding areas. The fixtures come in three main configurations: forward throw, semi-cutoff, and full cutoff. All these types block varying amounts of upward light spill because of the shape of their casings.

Fixture Types

Forward throw wall packs have the widest-angled span of illumination, casting light both downward and outward. Semi-cutoff fixtures limit the light to a more narrow angle, but still shine light a fair distance outward. Full cutoff wall packs illuminate directly downwards, making them better for tight spaces and washing walls in light.

Because wall pack designs focus heavily on blocking upward shine, they are excellent against light pollution.

Automation

To further ward wall packs against light pollution, you can minimize how and when you have them on. Different types of automation can streamline this process and make it as efficient as possible.

LED wall packs with photocells turn on automatically when the sun sets. This removes the need for hands-on control, but the lights will stay on all night unless you manually turn them off.

Equipping wall packs with motion sensors, dimmers, or timers provides significant reductions in light pollution. Motion sensors are ideal for spaces that have frequent nighttime activity. Dimmers and timers work best for businesses that are open late but not all night. Only having your wall packs turn on when necessary or dimming them at night is an easy and effective way to combat light pollution.

LED Wattage and Color Temperature

Other benefits that LED wall packs offer is a wider selection of wattage and color temperature. LED lighting is energy efficient, meaning the bulbs use less watts to emit greater amounts of light. Low wattage LED bulbs will still be bright while minimizing the harsh glow of high wattage incandescent and fluorescent bulbs.

Lamps with warmer color temperatures are also good for reducing glare and sky glow. White lights that have more of a bluish hue are more harmful because they have a farther reach than other spectrums of light. Blue light also has a harsher effect on human eyes and wildlife behavior. Warm outdoor lights are generally gentler and more unobtrusive.

By using LED wall packs with these features, cities see a significant decrease in their artificial light levels.

Shop HomElectrical's wide selection of LED wall packs ranging from forward throw to full cutoff and more. Start reversing your contributions and combating the effects of light pollution today!

How to get rid of light pollution?

Light pollution is a global problem, but there are things individuals can do to reduce their contributions. Simply turning off your outdoor lights when you don’t need them can lessen the amount of light you emit into the night sky. To make this practice even easier, you can also invest in dimmers, motion sensors, or timers for your lights. This allows your outdoor lamps to give off as little light as possible while still providing safety and visibility.

Using LED bulbs with low wattage and warm color temperatures can also help with light pollution. Cooler color temperatures emit harsh light that permeates the night sky, while warm temperatures give off a gentler glow. Low wattage LED bulbs, while having a lower, less harmful lumen output, also save energy and money in operation.

How can light pollution harm wildlife?

The presence of light in the environment influences many types of wildlife behavior. This can include feeding, migration, reproduction, and more.

Light-polluted city skies attract animals and insects like moths and frogs, causing them to migrate to places they shouldn’t. This displacement can concentrate them in one area, making it easy for predators to find and prey on them. In seaside cities, sea turtles use moonlight to find their way to the sea, but artificial lights can lead them astray. Misled migrations such as these kill millions of animals every year.

Light pollution especially affects nocturnal animals, which rely on darkness to be active at night. It disrupts their sleeping patterns and ability to hunt or scavenge. Predators that use light and darkness to hunt struggle in light polluted areas. Artificially lit environments also expose prey species that use darkness for cover.

By reducing light pollution, cities can restore their surrounding wildlife ecosystems to their natural cycles.