Best Basketball Court Lighting
Thinking of changing the lighting design of your basketball court? Our basketball court lights are suitable for residential, commercial or professional applications.High-mast LED flood lights are used in outdoor basketball courts such as backyard, high school, college and park.
LED is the best alternatives for replacing metal halide, halogen, HPS, mercury vapor and fluorescent lamp because LED is more energy-saving. Besides, it lasts longer than those conventional lighting solutions. Let’s explore how can we light up the basketball court and hoop with LED at night.

Basketball Court Lighting Requirements
1. Outdoor Basketball Court Lighting Design

a. Lux Level Requirement for Non-televised matches
Class I: It describes the top-class, international or national basketball matches such as NBA, NCAA Tournament and FIBA World Cup. The lighting system should be compatible to broadcasting requirement.
Class II: Class II event is regional competition. The lighting standard is less vigorous as it usually involved non-televised events.
Class III: Recreational or training events.

The lighting design and standard would be different for residential, recreational, commercial and professional outdoor basketball courts. According to basketball lighting guidebook, it takes around 200 lux for the backyard and recreational events. Since the size of a standard basketball court is 4700 sq. feet (437 sq. meter), we need around 200 lux x 437 = 87400 lumens.

Then, how many powers do we need to light up the basketball court? As our LED basketball court lights has 150 lm/w, we need at least 87400 / 150 = 583 watt LED. However, it is just an estimation only. We will need to make a dialux simulation to better determine which type of basketball court lights are needed, the number of basketball court light fixtures and wattage for each. If you have any questions, please feel free to consult our lighting designers and engineers by filling in the information in our contact form.

b. Lux Level Requirement for Professional, Televised Basketball Events

If your basketball stadium is designed for broadcasting matches such as NBA and FIBA World Cup, up to 2000 lux illuminance is required. Besides, the ratio between minimum and maximum lux within the basketball court should not lower than 0.7. The light sources shall have a colour rendering index of at least Ra 80 and the colour temperature shall be between 4000 K and 6000 K.

c. Anti-glare Lighting for Basketball Player and Spectators
Another important feature of the basketball court lighting system is the glare-free feature. Strong glare makes the players discomfort and dazzling. This issue is especially prominent for indoor basketball stadium because of the reflective floor. Sometimes we will need to use indirect lighting, which means pointing the ceiling lights upward and then use the reflected light to illuminate the court. However, we will need extra power of LED lights to compensate the light absorbed by the high ceiling.

d. Recommendation for lighting positions
The location of the floodlights is critical to comply with the lighting requirements. It must ensure that the lighting requirements can be achieved, while not interfering with the Players’ visibility as well as not creating any glare towards the main camera.

Careful attention shall be paid to the flood light positioning with regards to their aiming direction which shall not interfere with the players vision, especially when they are shooting at the baskets.
The following example illustrates a critical location for basketball court lights. In this example, the led lights located in the 20degree area shall not be aimed directly towards any player in a shooting position.

e. Flickering Free Basketball Stadium Lights
New technologies such as LED lighting allow guaranteed flicker-free lighting. Our LED basketball stadium lights are compatible to 6000 fps video shooting – the flicker rate is less than 0.3%, which is not detectable by the camera.

2. Basketball Court DIALux Lighting Design
Basketball stadium lighting design – DIALux

What is DIALux Simulation?
DIALux is a design tool that lighting engineers use to calculate and visualize the lighting requirements for specific applications. It determines which type of basketball court lights are needed, the number of basketball court light fixtures and wattage for each, and how far apart they should be placed. It also provides a visualization of the lighting coverage, so you can see exactly what you’re getting.It’s as close to “try before you buy” as you can get.

Cost of Televised Basketball Court Lighting
How much does it take to run the basketball court lighting?
The cost of LED lighting for basketball court will be high in unit price; but in the long run, it will prove to be cost-efficient. Here is an idea of how much basketball court lighting will cost.
As per standard, televised events or professional events require 2000 lux. So, it means you will need around 7000-watt LED basketball court lights. The running expense of basketball court lights for an hour will be as follows:
7000W x $0.12 / 1000 = $0.84
In case you turn on the lights for 8 hours a day, then the daily cost will be:
$0.84 x 8 = $6.72
And the total expense of LED basketball court lights will be $200. When compared to halogen bulbs, because the energy efficiency of halogen lamps is 10 times that of LEDs (requires 70,000W halogen lamps), electricity costs will be 10 times higher($2000).

Why Metal Halide & Halogen Replacement with LED for Basketball Courts?

1. Longer Life Span of LED Basketball Court Lights
Appropriate indoor basketball court flood lights reduce your running cost and maintenance cost. It is because you have no need to replace the LED basketball court lights so frequently. If you have current metal halide installed, you will find that the life span is very short. Plus, you will feel obvious brightness decrease after the use of few months to one year. Nevertheless, LED has life span of up to 80,000 hours, 30 years based on 6 to 7 hours use per day.

The life span of metal halide is around 5 times less than LED, and halogen is 10 times less. So, replacing them with LED saves your time and money on maintenance.

2. Better Heat Dissipation System of LED Basketball Court Lights

Heat accumulation inside the lamp body damages the led lights for basketball court. So a good thermal management can enhance performance of the indoor & outdoor basketball court lighting(such as higher brightness and life span). Here you see that our LED basketball court lights have dense aluminum fins design,each fin with ventilation holes which provides large surface area for heat transfer. Especially for the indoor basketball court lighting, the effective heat sink allows the LED basketball court lights last longer with high brightness. It is because the accumulated high temperature would accelerate lumen depreciation.
We seldom find such the complicated design in HID and halogen lamp.

3. Energy Saving LED Basketball Court Lights
Apart from life cycle and effective heat sink, our basketball court lights have super bright chips. The energy efficiency of LED is 150 lm/W, which is 2.5times more than metal halide lamps. Therefore, after the 1000 watt metal halide LED replacement, you can save 70% energy expense while maintaining same brightness.

4. LEDs Have Great Color Rendering Index (CRI)
CRI is a measurement of a light’s ability to reveal the actual color of objects as compared to an ideal light source (natural light),ranging from 0 to 100, higher is better. High CRI is generally a desirable characteristic (although of course, it depends on the required application). LEDs generally have very high (good) ratings(70+,80+,90+) when it comes to CRI.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate CRI is to look at a direct comparison between LED lighting (with a high CRI) and a traditional lighting solution like sodium vapor lamps (which generally have poor CRI ratings and are in some cases almost monochromatic). See the following image to compare and contrast the two instances.

5.LED Dimming Capability
LEDs are able to operate at virtually any percentage of their rated power (0 to 100%). Of note, they do require hardware specific to LED technology in order to dim (meaning you cannot use the dimming equipment for an incandescent bulb or other traditional lighting technology). A positive of operating LEDs at less than full power is that they get more efficient as the power is reduced. This also increases the total lifespan of the light itself. Both of those advantages are absent with technologies like metal halides that actually get less efficient at lower power and in many cases cannot be dimmed at all.

Conclusion
Therefore, investing in LED lights for the basketball court is an excellent way to brighten up your area. This is not only easy on your pocket but on the environment as well. In order to provide uniform and bright light, LED lights must be installed according to the standard lighting design of the basketball court. If you are looking for a quality LED basketball Court lights or need more information, please feel free to send us message via [email protected].