Best Lighting Design for Football Field
We offer free lighting design for football field, or referred as soccer pitch, having different standards for recreational, high school, college, professional and international tournament.
Our LED football stadium lighting complies with FIFA, Premier League and Olympic Games standards. Our engineers are proficient to utilize DIALux and RELUX to design the best lighting solution and create the photometric analysis report. Apart from introducing to you how should we place the outdoor luminaire, we will also give you the ideas of the common mistakes, and thus you can avoid them. Good planning is the pre-requisite of winning the lighting tenders.
Lighting Requirement of Football Field
The requirement provides the lighting guide for the sports field. Let’s explore how to select the best flood lights.
1. Lux Level (Brightness) Required for Football Stadium
The lux level standard is vastly different between televised and non-televised competitions. According to the FIFA’s stadium lighting guide, the class V (i.e. international televised such as World Cup) football field has the highest standard level of 2400 lux (vertical – face of football players), and 3500 lux (horizontal – the turf). If the football field is for community (recreational use), we need 200 lux level. The high school or college football club can have 500 lux.
2. Uniformity Standard
Another important parameter is lighting uniformity. It is a scale from 0 to 1 (max) reflecting the distribution of lumen across the sports field. It is the ratio of minimum illuminance to average illuminance (U1), or ratio of minimum to maximum (U2). Hence, if the lux level is quite similar, says around 650 to 700 lux, the difference between minimum and maximum value is very small, and the uniformity will be closer to 1. The lighting uniformity of the FIFA standard football stadium is 0.7, which is relatively challenging in the sports lighting industry.
3. Color Temperature
The general color temperature requirement of football ground is larger than 4000K for all classes. Despite this suggestion, we usually adopt 5000K to 6000K cool white light to provide better illumination for the players and audience because these colors are more invigorating.
Football Field Lighting Design
Lighting design is sometimes referred to as photometric analysis. According to the football lighting design guidebook, the size of football field, height, location, and number of light poles, illuminance level and uniformity should be taken into account. Then, the engineers will plan the luminaires in the following steps.
Step 1: Creating the Football Field
DIALux is a powerful yet free software for lighting designer because it can create almost all kinds of indoor and outdoor sports field. There are different templates fields such as football field, tennis court, badminton court and more. Afterwards, the designer will draw the light pole with the specific dimensions. The purpose is to simulate the real scenario and the placement of light. It helps give the more accurate results.
Step 2: Planning the LED Flood Lights
Lighting engineer will then “affix” the luminaires onto the high-mast light poles inside the software. Different combination of power, lumen output and beam angle produce vastly different outcome. Our job is to figure out the best design for football field lights. Since the requirement is different every time, we will design the unique, case-by-case solution.
Step 3: Generating the Photometric Analysis Report
Lastly, we render the reports for our clients. It is consisted of several parts. The value chart contains the lux value across the field, which gives you the overall idea of how bright is the sports ground. The isolines joint the same illuminance into a same line, while the false color rendering gives you a better visualization on the brightness of the field.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Designing the Sports Lights
To improve the quality of your submission, we can avoid the following common mistakes of sports lighting design.
1. Avoid Light Pollution in Your Design
The stadiums are using up to 60000 to 100000 watt LED lights. The poor control of light spill affects the living quality of the residents nearby. The strong glare will blur the vision of road users and thus jeopardize lives of pedestrian.
To solve this issue, our LED stadium lights come with anti-glare and precise optical system that direct the lights onto the designated areas to reduce light loss. Besides, we can use the floodlights having smaller beam angle, and thus the lights become more concentrated.
2. Lifespan of the Luminaire
Some electrical contractor might omit the service life of the lights. Indeed, the lights that can last for more than 20 years is a great incentives for the stadium owners. Frequent replacement also means high maintenance cost. Our LED lights have 80000 hours lifespan, which is equivalent to 27 years if they are turned on for 8 hours each day.
3. Flickering Issue of Your Lighting Design
This issue is especially prominent in the football stadium holding the international, televised competitions. In the lighting design, we should ensure that the lighting for football pitch will not flicker under the slow-motion camera; otherwise, it will significantly affect the audience experience. The strobing light affect the judgment under playback, also it will make your stadium looks unprofessional.
Nonetheless, our sports field lights are designed for high-speed camera. They have the flickering rate less than 0.3%, which fulfils the international broadcasting standard.
By considering all of the above factors, your chance of success will be greatly improved. You can always get the professional and the best lighting opinion by contact us.
Stadiums with Excellent Lighting System
Here’s a list of football stadiums that are widely acclaimed and provides the best lighting design for the players.
1. AT&T Football Stadium
AT&T has been a favorite in the list of stadiums. Not only it has a massive capacity which can hold up to 80,000 but is a beauty on its own. The arena is renowned for its operable glass doors and is situated in Texas. It is the fourth biggest in the list of NFL.
The lighting plan is consisted of a nearly 360° high power flood lamp that provide shadowless illumination.
2. Anfield Stadium
This is the home to the Liverpool FC team and is another famous stadium that has made to the list. This ground is known to create a magical atmosphere during the European nights and has a capacity of about 54,000 and is an iconic part of the UK.
The lighting system consists of 200+ sets of 400 watt LED lights. The CRI reaches 85 for Premier League matches.
3. San Siro Stadium
San Siro in Italy is another spectacular place which has a capacity of around 80,000. It has been a tourist attraction in Italy and gives a spectacular view. The visibility of this field is absolutely stunning and the spectators can view the match properly from wherever they are seated.
Over 60000 watt LED lights are installed, which gives super-bright lighting design for football play.
4. Victoria Stadium
Victoria of Gibraltar is nothing less than a wonder. Placed just off the Winston Churchill Avenue, this arena has hosted football, cricket and amazing music shows. There is a lump of rock which is the main sight of attraction of this stadium. The field looks beautiful on a sunny day and hosts some of the best matches for the UEFA fans.
5. Osasuna Stadium
Osasuna is popularly known as the El Sadar Stadium and is one of the best grounds in Spain. The capacity is about 18,000 and is situated on the side of a river. The vast stretch of the field makes it a delightful watch during the matches.
6. Allianz Arena
Allianz Arena of Germany is a home to the Munich football teams. The stadium is known for its beauty in changing colour according to the team who is playing. It also houses the Bayern Munich museum within the ground which makes it a big tourist attraction.
7. Camp Nou
Camp Nou is the biggest stadium in Europe and is known to hold a capacity of 99,786. The stadium is the home for FC Barcelona and has retro feel in its architecture. The translucent panels in the arena are used to portray the colors of the teams.
Conclusion
Stadiums are massive outdoor structures, steeped in history and built to exhibit football as well as possible to everyone who is there. Football is not a mere game but the entire sport enthralls the mind and body in a spectacular way. The game has its own strategy and every minute builds a new suspense. Night play is a very challenging tasks as we need to ensure there is adequate illumination for the huge turf. To achieve it, we can have comprehensive photometric design before buying the lighting fixtures. There are stunning stadiums all over the world and they have been widely renowned for their architecture, ground, ambience and the overall capacity, lighting would always be an indispensable part.
Please feel free to shoot us a message to get free lighting opinion and design at email beatus@ledsmaster.com