Sports Lights

Basketball Court LED Lighting – Buyer’s Guide

Our basketball court LED lighting is suitable for residential, commercial or professional applications. High mast LED flood lights are applied to outdoor basketball court, such as backyard, high school, college, & public park.

In 2018, we develop the advanced LED lighting system for indoor NBA basketball court stadium. The ceiling lights provide up to 1500 to 2000 lux (brightness) level for professional tournament.

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.

lighting-design-and-application-for-outdoor-basketball-court

Lighting Design of Basketball Court

1. Outdoor Commercial Basketball Court Lighting Design

a. Lux Level Requirement for Non-televised matches

basketball-court-lighting-requirement-for-non-televised-competitionsThe 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, stand and hoop? Since our LED light has 130 lumens per watt, we need at least 87400 / 130 = 672 watt LED. However, it is just an estimation only. If you have any questions, please feel free to consult our lighting designers and engineers by filling in the information in our contact form.

Fun Fact: What are the Class I, II and III of Basketball Court Competitions?

According to FIBA, there are 3 sports lighting classes.

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: The example of 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.

b. Lighting Standard for Professional, Televised Basketball Events

If your basketball court or 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 exceed 0.5. The color temperature should fall within 5500 to 6000K (cool white lights) as well as high CRI of 90.

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. Flickering Free Lights for Basketball Stadium

The lights having poor quality strobes under the (high-speed) cameras. Our LED floodlights 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

Apart from brightness, we can have a look at lighting uniformity. In the above picture, you can see there are different color portions. The majority area has green color, which means 250 lux. You can see there are quite large and uniform green region. This means the lighting uniformity requirement is high. If there are too many dim or sudden bright spots, there will irritate the eyes of player, judges and the people looking at the court as well as the basketball hoop. We provide our clients with free DIALux design to accurately predict the lighting outcome.

bright-and-uniform-lighting-design-for-indoor-basketball-court

Cost of Televised Basketball Court Lighting

How much does it take to run the basketball court lighting? Take the top-class, televised event as an example, the lux requirement is 2000 lux, and thus requires around 7000 watt LED lights. If a basketball court match takes around an hour, the running cost of lighting due to electricity is 7000W x $0.12/1000 = $0.84 per hour. If they turn on for 8 hours, the daily running cost would be $6.72, and monthly $200. If you use halogen bulbs, the electricity cost will be 10 times more as the energy efficiency of halogen light is 10 times less than LED (70000W halogens are needed).

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

1. LED has Longer Life Span

Appropriate Indoor basketball court flood lights reduce your running cost and maintenance cost. It is because you have no need to replace the LED 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 80,000 hours, or 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. Hence, replacing them with LED saves your time and money on maintenance.

2. Better Heat Sink System

heat dissipation of LED basketball court flood lamp

Heat accumulation inside the lamp body damages the sports floodlights. We attach great importance in improving the LED’s heat dissipation because a good thermal management can enhance performance of luminaries (such as higher brightness and life span). The above photo illustrates that our LED lights have dense aluminum fins design, which provides large surface area for heat transfer. Especially for the indoor low bay basketball court lighting, the effective heat sink allows the LED luminaries last longer. 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 Lights

Apart from life cycle and effective heat sink, our LED lights have super bright chips. The energy efficiency of LED is 140 lm/W, which is a double of metal halide lamps. Therefore, after the 1000 watt metal halide LED replacement, you can save 50% energy expense while maintaining same brightness.

Solar Powered Outdoor Basketball Court Flood Lights

Solar powered outdoor basketball court lightingSolar powered panel is a perfect match for outdoor basketball court lighting. LED consumes less energy and thus it is capable to use sun light to drive them. We adopt high energy conversion solar panel which is specially designed for outdoor high mast poles.

The water-proof ability will not be affected after the attachment of the panel onto the lighting fixtures. The battery lasts for 3 to 5 hours depending on the power of the flood lamps.

To get the better help on your lighting projects, please feel free to send us a message via email beatus@ledsmaster.com