Incorporating Lighting Features into Steel Shade Designs

Lighting features are vital in steel shade designs. They enhance the space and are essential for optimising safety and security. Lighting also helps to customise a shade structure and make it more appealing to people using it.

Keep reading to learn more about the importance of optimal lighting solutions and see examples of how lighting is integrated into shade structure design.

Why Optimal Lighting Solutions Are Vital in Shade Structures

Including lighting solutions, such as LED lighting and pendant lighting in a shade structure for an outdoor area, has both aesthetic and functional benefits. We will take a closer look at these benefits to give you advice and inspiration for your living space, business space, or social area.

Optimising the Usability of Your Space

During daylight hours, the design of your shade structure helps you optimise your use of natural light. However, when external light sources diminish during the day and into the night, well-positioned lighting fixtures allow you to continue using the space. This means you can make the best use of your shade structure throughout the day and optimise your investment.

Ensuring Safety and Security

Safety is a functional purpose of lighting you cannot ignore. Ensuring there is enough light when people are using your shade structure means they are less likely to trip or fall. A good example of this is sports courts, where players must have enough light present to avoid injury.

In addition, lighting enhances the security of your shade structure. External security lights, for example, reduce the risk of damage to the structure and vandalism.

Creating Ambience in an Outdoor Space

Using ambient lighting is an excellent way of enhancing an outdoor space and making it more inviting. Lighting can be part of your overall design and can create the mood you are aiming for. For example, bright lighting and colours can create a lively play space, while muted lighting is more beneficial for a relaxing aura.

Understanding how light creates the required ambience makes your shade structure more appealing. This is a valuable attribute if you are using a shade structure for a business or organisation, as it enhances engagement and can improve profits.

Customising the Space

Lighting features are integral to the customisation of a shade structure. Lighting options that help with this include,

• Tailored colour choices.
• Programmable settings that can adjust lighting according to the use of the space and the time of day.
• Choosing high bay lighting for sports courts or other spaces more than eight metres in height creates uniform illumination across the entire space.
• Ensuring there isn't glare when using the space below
• Ensuring there is light spillage into neighbouring areas

Incorporating Energy Savings in Lighting Design

Modern lighting solutions are available that allow you to achieve all the benefits of incorporating lighting into steel shade while reducing energy costs and protecting the planet. These lighting solutions include not only the lights themselves but also batteries and solar panels. So, you get the lighting you need without using your mains electricity supply. 

Examples of Shade Structures With Efficient and Effective Lighting

To clearly show how lighting features can be incorporated in shade structure designs, we have listed some design projects where we worked with lighting professionals to create an end product where lighting elevates the practicality and aesthetic appeal of each structure.

Moree Services Club

For this project, we coordinated with providers of optimal lighting to enable effective play. The result of our collaboration was the unveiling of new $2.3 million covered synthetic bowling greens at the Moree Services Bowling Club, marking the club’s 50^th birthday.

The new greens make bowling at the club a more attractive experience. This is especially true as the integrated lighting features allow users to use the facilities during daylight hours and throughout the evening.

Melbourne Equine Western Training Facility

We are proud to have been involved with creating this statement structure. Our work helped bring this state-of-the-art training facility to life. Given the use of the structure we created for the facility, safety is paramount. The lighting features included in the design create sufficient illumination to prevent accidents from happening.

Corpus Christi Primary School

This school needed a structure where sports could be played even in wet weather. The area under the structure also serves as a gathering space for all the students. The design fits with the current school building, which incorporates natural elements of the surrounding area.

This is evident from our use of painted structural steel that blends with the landscape architecture. We also used curved roofs, which feature in both the new structure and the original school building.

Lighting features are an essential element of this design. They allow the structure to be used safely and effectively even when natural light levels are low.

Club North Haven

The aim behind this design project was to provide a shade structure enabling all-weather use. We worked in collaboration with other contractors to ensure the design met Club North Haven’s requirements. These contractors were in charge of areas such as plumbing, birdproof netting, and lighting. In the case of this design, lighting features allow the greens at the club to be used when natural light levels are insufficient.

Our involvement with so many diverse projects over the years means we understand how lighting features included in steel shade designs create dynamic spaces. We will work with lighting contractors to ensure that lighting features in your shade structures are optimised in terms of factors such as safety, maximising usage, ambience, customisation, and artistic enhancement.

We are happy to discuss your shade design requirements with you, so you get the result you aim for. Simply contact us to discuss your requirements.