LED court lighting: what changed and what to specify

A lit court is used three times as much as an unlit one in a Northeast Ohio summer, when the evenings are the best hours of the day. Lights are also the line item that gets cut: Hudson's seventeen-court complex was designed with lights and opened without them, and donors later raised enough to light six of the pickleball courts. LED fixtures changed what lights cost to run and what they do to the neighbors; they did not change what the poles and the trenching cost. Here is what to know before you spec them.

What LED changed

Three things. The fixtures use a fraction of the power of the metal-halide lamps they replaced, and they last twenty years instead of needing lamps every few seasons, so the running cost of a lit court dropped to the point where a club can leave the timer on. The light can be aimed: an LED fixture is an array of small sources behind optics, and a good one puts its light on the court with a sharp cut-off at the fence, where a metal-halide floodlight sprayed it across the neighborhood. And they switch instantly and dim, so a controller can run the courts at half level for warm-up, full for play, and off at ten, from a phone.

What to ask for

• Light level. The industry's recommended practice (IES RP-6) and the USTA's guidance set maintained horizontal illuminance by class of play: recreational tennis around 30 to 50 footcandles average on the court, club and tournament play higher; pickleball similar to recreational tennis. Specify the maintained level, not the initial one, because every fixture dims over its life.
• Uniformity. The ratio of the brightest to the dimmest spot on the court, which decides whether a lob disappears. Ask for a uniformity ratio and a photometric plan, a drawing with the numbers on it, from the fixture maker, not from the electrician.
• Spill and glare. Full cut-off optics, fixtures aimed down, and a stated maximum at the property line. This is what the neighbors will measure, and a plan that shows a tenth of a footcandle at the fence is the document that ends the argument.
• Poles. Four poles for a court at the fence corners or the sidelines, 20 to 30 feet high; higher poles light more evenly with less glare and need deeper footings. Pole bases go in before the asphalt, which is why lights are cheapest on a new court and dearest on a finished one.
• Controls. A timer with a hard cut-off, a keyed or coded switch at the court, and a controller the owner can reach from a phone. Players will not turn lights off; the timer does.
• Color temperature. Around 4,000 to 5,000 kelvin reads as white without the blue glare of higher numbers; some towns now cap it in their lighting codes.

What it costs

The fixtures are the smaller part. Poles, footings, trenching, conduit, a panel and the electrician are most of the bill, and they are the same whether the fixtures are LED or anything else. Hudson's bid prices above were for seventeen courts with the trenching across a whole complex; a single court with power nearby is a different order of money, and four pickleball courts on one pad share four poles. The honest way to budget is to get the photometric plan and the pole count first and price the civil work from that.

On an existing court

Lights can be added later, and often are, as Hudson is doing. The cost is the trenching and the footings through a finished pad and the color coat patched where the conduit crosses it; we coordinate the trench with a resurfacing where we can, so the court is coated once. Conduit stubs put in during construction, even with no lights planned, are the cheapest thing on this page.

What we do and do not do

We build the court and set the pole bases and the conduit as part of the pad; the fixtures, poles and wiring are the lighting contractor's and the electrician's, working from the fixture maker's plan. What we bring is the coordination: the bases in before the asphalt, the conduit under the court before the color, and a court laid out so the poles are where the plan wants them and not where the fence happened to be.