In this post, we are going to talk about the importance of tennis lights and making a proper installation of them in order to achieve the desired tennis court lighting.
1. Why is so Important to Install the Adequate Tennis Court Lighting?
As tennis is a fast sport where the main object is a small ball which travels at high speed, players and spectators need to have clear vision of the ball at any time. In order to do that, there has to be the correct illumination in the field.
The most common solution is to install floodlights for tennis courts, these lamps can be Metal Halide, HPS or LED floodlights. A comparison between them can be found in the section 4 of this post.
There are many benefits of having a good illumination in the tennis court, for example, it can be opened at night or in cloudy days extending the playing time, so more players and coaches will use the field. This means that a proper illumination system for Tennis Court Lighting becomes more advantageous and profitable.
2. How to Design the Tennis Court Lighting Installation?
The lighting industries are finding solutions to properly illuminate the tennis fields. It is very important to know what kind of field is going to be illuminated. The fields are divided in outdoor and indoor. This is a key factor, not only because the lighting requirements are different between them but also to find the way to install the luminaries.
Usually, in indoors the Tennis Court Lighting fixtures are installed on the ceiling and in some cases, the ceiling doesn’t have the same height in all the points so you have to adapt each fixture to fit with the height of every installation point.
In outdoors generally the Tennis Court Lighting lamps are installed in poles, the most common solutions are 4 to 8 poles around the field. If the field has 4 poles they should be near the corners so the illumination gets better uniformity, 2 extra poles can be added to this solution making a total of 6 poles where these 2 extra poles are located in the sides of the net.
Is also important to have a budget according to the needs: is not the same illuminating one field for training or amateur use than one for professional games. Of course, the tennis court lighting cost are different for each project so is important to find the best illumination that can meet the budget.
3. Different Tennis Court Lighting Requirement & Classes
There are 3 lighting classes of sport fields:
Lighting Class I: Top level competition such as international and national competition which will generally involve large spectator capacities with long potential viewing distances. Top level training can also be included in this class.
Lighting Class II: Mid level competition such as regional or local club competition which generally involve medium size spectator capacities with medium viewing distances. High level training can also be included in this class.
Lighting Class III: Low level competition such as local or small club competition which generally do not involve spectators. General training, physical education (school sports) and recreational activities will also come into this category.
The following table can assist in the selection of the lighting class.
For class I fields, the lux levels on the ground should have an average of 750.
As the note says, is very important to not place the luminaires directly above the playing rectangle. Also, is recommended that the lighting fixtures are mounted parallel to the sidelines.
Outdoor tennis lighting should match the following table:
In order to achieve the adequate lighting levels while making sure that the players are not getting dazzled, the position of the poles is very important. Normally, the poles are from 8 to 12 meters of height if there is a single court.
As we can see, the Tennis Court Lighting requirements for outdoors are a bit lower.
4. HPS vs MH vs LED Lighting
| High Pressure Sodium | Metal Halide | LED | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lumen per Watt (lm/W) | 80-140 | 100-140 | 100-160 |
| Power Efficiency | 60% – 80% | 60% – 80% | 95% |
| Life Span (hours) | 20000 | 20000 | 80000 |
| Use of Optics | No | No | Yes |
| Warm up Time (minutes) | Up to 15 | Up to 5 | Instant On |
| Use of Mercury | Yes | Yes | No |
A 400W LED Flood Light can easily replace a 1000W Metal Halide Lamp saving more than 60% of the energy while providing similar lighting levels in the ground.
The only drawback of led tennis lighting is that it might require some more initial investment, but after 6 months to 1 year, customers would already be saving a lot on energy. And after the 1st year and a half, the amount saved in energy has been more than enough to pay the initial extra investment. From then on, the LEDs will be generating revenue (a good cash-cow to have).
Changing to LED is the right choice to make as LED is not the future, is already the present! Are you ready to start saving money?
Tennis Court using LED Lights
Tennis Court using Metal Halide
5. Common LedsUniverse Fixtures for Tennis Court Floodlighting
We have a wide range of LED Lights for tennis courts, every project is different but in most of the cases for tennis lighting we are using LED Floodlights between 250W and 400W.
The following Dialux report was made by using 12 Luminaries of 300W ACE version:
The Tennis court was in total 30 meters of length and 15.60 meters of width:
It’s very important to know where the poles are located, in this project there were 4 poles of 10 meters located on the sides of the court with a distance of 8.55 meters from the corners.
There were 12 lighting fixtures in total, each pole had 3 LED Flood Lights installed of 300W. These LED lights for tennis courts are very popular as they can be installed easily and they bring a lot of intensity and brightness to the field. The distribution diagram using a 25 beam degree angle is as follows:
The following pictures shows the ground lux over the distance of a 300W LED Flood Light and 25º beam degree angle. Is very impressive for a 300W LED Flood Light!
Once we have all the information about the dimensions of the field, the locations of the poles, and the lighting fixtures needed, we can make the simulation. As it can be seen in the following picture, we achieved an average of 713 lux reaching over 1200 lux in some parts of the main court:
This solution can perfectly fit for a Class I outdoor tennis court as it overcomes the tennis lighting standards.
With this project was proved that LED lights for tennis courts was not over the expectations of our customer but we made him save huge amounts of energy as the field is only using 3600W of power. The energy bill dropped by 60% and the benefits of the field increased considerably as it can be used more hours through the day.
6. Maintenance for LED Sports Flood Lights
LedsUniverse LED Flood Lights and LED Tennis Lights are very easy to maintain as they can support any climatologic condition, from the ice-cold mountains of Sweden to the suffocating temperatures of Middle East. They can be cleaned using a hose and their life span is over 80.000 hours. On top of that, we offer 5 years warranty so our customers are always feel safe using our products.
If you are thinking to change the lighting system of your tennis court or any other sport field, don’t doubt to contact us as we have over 10 years of experience in tennis lights and sport lighting and we have a wide range of tennis courts lights for sale.
7. Light Source Test Report
Picking the LED Tennis Lights with the right Technical Parameters and Lumen/Source Indication, which also has a good throw and projection of lumen into the ground, will increase your overall lux while making you save money in the process.
Chose LedsUniverse Technology mast fixtures, and be sure to have in your sports field world class LED tennis lights.