Exterior Garage Door Lighting (A Short Guide)

If you don’t have any exterior garage door lighting right now, you could be missing out. Quality exterior lighting units, installed in strategically chosen locations, could provide a number of benefits that you and your family find invaluable. In this article, our garage door installation team is going to share some tips on installing exterior garage door lighting. We will also talk about how to select the right type of lights and the right installation locations. But first of all, let’s discuss some of those benefits we mentioned.

Garage Door Lighting: The Potential Benefits

If you have survived very well for many years without any exterior garage door lighting, you may be wondering what you are missing out on, if anything. Below, are a few of the key benefits that exterior garage door lights have to offer:

• Aesthetic Improvement – Most people agree that external garage door lights add curb appeal to residential properties, especially when the location of each light has been carefully chosen.
• Boost to Home Security – Potential intruders and burglars are more likely to give your property a wide berth if they can’t break in without putting themselves under the spotlight, quite literally in many cases.
• Safer for You and Your Guests – Poorly illuminated outdoor areas can make it hard for people to walk around outside their homes without tripping over and hurting themselves. With a decent level of illumination, you can ensure that the area outside your garage door is always safe for you and your guests to navigate.

In addition to these benefits, you will find it easier to park your car at night, with the entire area outside your garage door being properly illuminated.

Choosing the Perfect Exterior Lights for Your Garage Door

As a company that specializes in garage door repair and installation in Broomfield and Parker, we have helped many local residents to transform the appearance of their garages. As part of our service, we are always happy to help our customers choose the perfect exterior lights for their properties. We always recommend beginning with a consideration of your specific needs:

• Type of Lighting - Do you want to illuminate the entire outdoor area with uniform lighting or would you prefer to shine the spotlight on one or more specific locations? Your answer to this question will help you to decide between wide-angled floodlights and more focused spotlights.
• Function vs. Form – Are you more interested in how the lighting looks or in the safety and security benefits it has to offer, or a combination of the two? If you wish to install exterior garage door lighting for purely aesthetic purposes, you may wish to focus your attention on decorative pendant lamps and sconces. On the other hand, if security is your main concern, we recommend concentrating on practical floodlight-style lighting.
• Added Functionality – If your main priority is function rather than form, is there any added functionality in which you may be interested? Could you, for instance, be interested in floodlights that are activated by a motion sensor? For the most functionality, you may wish to consider smart lighting, i.e. lighting fixtures that can be added to a smart home system and controlled remotely.

Once you have considered the above points, you will have a much better idea of the type of lighting on which you should be focusing. Now it’s time to consider the installation locations for your new exterior garage door lights.

Location of Lighting for Your Overhead Door: Installation Considerations

The ideal installation locations for your new lighting will depend to a large extent on the type of lighting you have chosen.

• Functional Floodlights or Spotlights – If you have decided to install functional lighting to deter burglars and improve safety outside your home, there will normally only be one or two possible installation sites that make sense. The exact location of the lighting you install will generally depend on the specific area or areas that you wish to illuminate.
• Decorative Sconces or Pendant Lamps – If you have chosen decorative lighting fixtures instead, you should let your eyes tell you where to install them. Many people find they are best installed around head height, to either side of overhead garage doors, but if you have a different idea, there’s no harm in experimenting.

Once you have decided on the perfect installation sites, you may wish to think about the type of bulbs you are going to use with your new exterior lighting.

Special Bulb Types to Consider

Whether you buy your new lighting from a local garage door company or you order them online, you are likely to be offered a choice of functional, as well as purely decorative, light bulb types:

• Dark Sky-Compliant – To minimize light pollution in residential areas, you can choose to use dark sky-compliant bulbs. They are special low-brightness bulbs designed to be used in downward-facing lighting fixtures.
• Dimmable Lights – If you would like to have dimmable lights outside your garage door, choose LED bulbs designed specifically for this purpose.
• Solar-Powered Lights – For lower utility bills and a smaller carbon footprint, solar-powered exterior light bulbs are a great choice.

Other types of light bulb options you may encounter include insect-repellent lights, lights with timers and automatic dusk-to-dawn lights.

If you would like to discuss our garage door installation services in Parker and Broomfield, please don’t hesitate to contact us.