Ellie Walton

Lighting the night to enhance our surroundings

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is one of humanity’s great enablers. It allows us to function, move, and connect after sunset, supporting public safety, productivity, and social interaction. From the first oil lamps of the 17th century to today’s LED-illuminated cities, light at night has been synonymous with progress and prosperity.

Yet the way we illuminate our nights is evolving. The growing awareness of energy use, carbon emissions, and ecological impacts has prompted a collective shift toward lighting that is both human-centric and environmentally responsible, with efficiency and effective use of energy in mind. Optimal light at night is not about switching lights off, but about using the right light, at the right place, at the right time, controlled by the right system, ensuring illumination supports people while minimising its footprint on nature and optimising the budget of municipalities.

Why introduce artificial lighting at night

ALAN offers great opportunities for any city, park or street. Adding lighting at night can make communities safer, more economical, and improve well-being. A good lighting design can improve quality of life, enabling evening recreation, supporting tourism, and reinforcing the identity of public spaces. Upgrading outdated systems unlocks major energy savings, and switching to connected LED luminaires can cut consumption by 70% while reducing maintenance and operational costs.

Safer environments that preserve the integrity of the night sky: Populated areas are illuminated to keep our communities safe. According to research conducted by the World Council on City Data, in association with Signify, upgrading to connected street lighting can reduce crime rates by 21%, as well as reduce nighttime traffic accidents by 30%. With the right lighting designs and technologies, we can deliver the same safety benefits while preserving the night sky, limiting reflected light, and minimising how much light is emitted. For instance, the inclusion of motion sensors in street lanterns to only illuminate spaces when needed, and smart optics that direct light only to where it is needed, both avoid any wasted emission of light.

Efficient lighting, only when we need it: Connected lighting systems can program lighting to automatically dim or switch off at certain hours of the night, when there is little or no human activity. This can deliver reductions in overall energy use for municipalities, where public street and area lighting can account for as much as 40% of a city's electricity consumption. Signify Interact, for example, allows centralised scheduling of all street and area lights in a city, making lighting behaviours easy to manage and modify based on seasons, animal activity, and other considerations. Connected lighting technologies like Interact ensure that only the light that is required is used, lowering energy costs and supporting emissions reduction targets.

Protecting natural ecosystems: Too much light at night can disturb our natural sleep cycle and can impact the behaviour of wildlife. Fortunately, street lights can be adjusted to reduce sky spill, which DarkSky defines as the 'unwanted spillage of light onto adjacent areas,' and programmed to automatically switch off or dim when not in use.

The challenges

One the other hand, one can’t ignore the challenges. Poorly installed or misdirected luminaires contribute to skyglow, reducing the visibility of stars and altering the natural rhythm of night and day. Glare and light trespass disturb sleep and compromise comfort, while the wildlife – from bats and migrating birds to insects – depend on darkness to feed and navigate.

From an environmental and economic perspective, wasted light means wasted energy. Each unnecessary kilowatt-hour adds to carbon emissions and municipal costs. With biodiversity loss and energy efficiency high on the global agenda, avoiding unnecessary light has become both an ecological and economic imperative.

Many areas of the EU lack regulations addressing the environmental impact of ALAN, and where rules exist, they vary widely between countries, regions, and even cities, creating inefficiencies in tackling the issue at a European level. For example, France regulates the colour, timing, and direction of lighting; some regions in Spain quantify blue light using the spectral G-index; and Italy enforces 18 different regional lighting laws. Cities like London and organisations such as the ILP provide general design guidance referencing CIE environmental lighting zones to manage effects like skyglow and façade lighting, following the principle of “the right light, in the right place, at the right time, controlled by the right system.”

Practical guide to lighting specification

When you specify lighting, you shape how effectively people, places, and nature experience the night. Your role goes beyond design; you advise clients on using the right light, in the right place, at the right time. Effective projects begin with early, thoughtful planning that avoids excessive light and aligns functional, environmental, and social goals.

When you plan a project, consider these essentials:

• Assess the need: Is lighting truly required, and to what extent?
• Understand users: Identify visual tasks, activity patterns, and safety needs.
• Respect the environment: Recognise nearby habitats, dark-sky areas, or EU Natura 2000 areas.
• Check regulations: Review applicable national, regional, and municipal ordinances.
• Set sustainability goals: Define measurable outcomes for energy savings, biodiversity protection, and long-term maintenance.

Responsible lighting starts with collaboration. Effective projects depend on shared understanding and clear communication between all stakeholders (lighting designers, installers, contractors, municipalities, ESCO/utilities, operators).

In the early stages, discuss both the benefits of good lighting and the potential side effects of poor implementation. This allows you to align expectations, define realistic budgets, and include commissioning and maintenance within the scope from the beginning. Even within limited budgets, well-balanced design using modern optics and controls can deliver excellent results. This approach helps empower clients to appreciate the long-term value of responsible lighting choices

Leading the way to responsible lighting solutions

At Signify, we advocate for the following techniques as a powerful way to illuminate responsibly:

• Conserve: To use light only when needed, set schedules and motion detection to use light only when needed
• Contain: direct light only towards the intended area and prevent unnecessary spillage
• Control: Adapt light output to no more than what’s necessary
• Colour: Choose your light spectrum depending on the surrounding environment and biodiversity

Together, these four techniques enable customers to use light intelligently, efficiently, and with respect for people and the environment. If paired with solutions with circularity built in, there can be unparalleled economic benefits.

Optimal lighting at night represents progress, not compromise, and Signify is leading the way in harmonising technology, design, and environmental care. Achieving optimal light at night requires collaboration among policymakers, designers, manufacturers, and operators. Signify is committed to ensuring that every lumen serves a purpose to support life and minimise ecological impact. Together, we can restore the balance between human needs and the natural night.

www.signify.com

by Ellie Walton

Brice Schneider Comment: Selling Our Shadow

Concerned that our modern environments are becoming too overlit and “disconnected”, Brice Schneider, Design Director at Nulty, offers a perspective shaped by nearly two decades of practice across several continents, inviting the lighting design community worldwide to reflect more deeply on this global phenomenon.

Light reveals, but shadow gives meaning. Somewhere in our pursuit of brightness, we have forgotten this. We flood our cities with artificial illumination, erase darkness from our interiors, and measure progress in lumens per watt. Light is clarity, we are told an enabler of safety, productivity, and visibility. But in this relentless pursuit of brightness, what have we lost?

Shadows are more than the absence of light. They shape depth, create rhythm, and bring texture to space. They offer contrast, making light more meaningful. They whisper of time’s passage, of morning stretching into noon, dusk dissolving into night. Yet, in our modern environments – overlit, sterile, and disconnected – we have sold our shadow, unaware of the price we would pay.

There is an old story about a man who made a terrible bargain. In Peter Schlemihl’s Remarkable Story, the 19th-century novella by Adelbert von Chamisso, a traveller trades his shadow for a bottomless purse of gold. At first, he revels in his fortune, until he realises what he has truly lost. Without his shadow, the world rejects him. People recoil, unable to trust a man without one. He becomes an outsider, unable to belong.

Traditionally, Schlemihl’s story is seen as a cautionary tale about wealth and social exclusion, but there is another way to read it. What if his loss of shadow represents something deeper? A disconnection not just from society, but from the natural world itself?

Like Schlemihl, we have made a bargain of our own. In exchange for the convenience of perpetual brightness, we have severed our relationship with the natural play of light and dark, warmth and coolness, presence and absence. We have created environments where time no longer unfolds naturally, where space feels flat, where the quiet drama of sunlight and moonlight has been replaced by static, mechanical illumination.

Schlemihl, desperate to reclaim what he has lost, spends years wandering in search of belonging. Perhaps, like him, we are beginning to realise that in selling our shadow, we have lost something essential something that can only be recovered by reconsidering how we design and experience light.

In recent years, the shortcomings of over-illuminated, rigidly controlled environments have become undeniable. The Covid-19 pandemic forced many to examine their surroundings more closely, exposing the discomfort of living and working in spaces that feel lifeless. The absence of natural rhythm, the gentle shifts of daylight, the presence of shadow, became impossible to ignore.

As we move forward, lighting must be rethought not only in terms of function but in terms of experience. Global sustainability initiatives such as the UN’s 2030 Agenda and the 2050 climate goals challenge us to rethink not just how much energy we use, but how light shapes our relationship with place, time, and wellbeing.

For too long, we have treated artificial illumination as a fixed commodity, something to be controlled and measured. But light in the natural world is never static. It shifts with the seasons, dances with the wind, softens under cloud cover, and transforms as the day unfolds. Yet, conventional lighting design has largely ignored this fluidity, enforcing a mechanistic, uniform glow rather than an illumination that breathes and responds to its surroundings.

Even recent efforts to create human-friendly lighting, designed to better support sleep cycles and wellbeing, remain limited. Most of these approaches focus only on daylight hours, overlooking the complexity of nocturnal illumination. Light at night is not just about visibility, it affects the behaviour of wildlife, the growth of plants, and the subtle interplay between light, air, and water.

But this is beginning to change.

Rather than treating light and darkness as opposing forces, we should embrace the in-between spaces – those liminal moments where light shifts, softens, and reveals the textures of its surroundings. These are the places where light is alive, changing not just with time, but in response to the world around it.

Inspired by Iain McGilchrist’s exploration of meaningful connections, this approach restores depth, emotional resonance, and harmony to environments, countering the sterility of static, overlit spaces. Light, like a storyteller, carries the memory of its journey from the way it filters through a dense forest canopy, to the way it glows softly against textured surfaces, to its quiet shimmer on water. These moments of connection create spaces that feel layered, immersive, and deeply human.

At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that less is more when used at the right time. Instead of flooding spaces with uniform brightness, light should emerge and recede, responding to the natural flow of the day and the needs of those who inhabit it.

The future of lighting should not simply be about meeting lux levels; it should be about intentionality, responsiveness, and context. It should recognise the role of environmental psychology: the way lighting influences mood, perception, and emotional connection to space. Just as music uses silence to give sound meaning, lighting should use shadow, contrast, and rhythm to bring depth to the built environment.

Lighting is not just functional; it is deeply emotional. The way a space is illuminated shapes how we feel within it – whether we experience a sense of warmth and intimacy or detachment and sterility. If designed thoughtfully, lighting has the power to enhance connection, guiding perception in a way that feels natural rather than imposed.

A more artistic, poetic approach to lighting could reshape our relationship with the night, communicating how and why certain lighting strategies evoke emotional responses. Instead of seeing darkness as a problem to be solved, we could learn to work with it, using soft glows, layered shadows, and patterned light to create visual transitions that reduce the need for excessive brightness.

Light should not dominate its environment; it should belong to it.

Patterned illumination, subtle shifts in texture and contrast can be more effective than sheer brightness in shaping perception, improving visual acuity, and reducing overall energy consumption. A well-placed glow can guide without overpowering. A thoughtful shadow can define space more effectively than a flood of light.

The goal is not just to see, but to experience.

For too long, we have treated light as something to impose upon the world. But light does not exist in isolation; it is shaped by its surroundings, transformed by what it touches. It moves, it breathes, it changes.

To reclaim our shadow is to recognise this; to understand that light is most beautiful, most profound, when it dances with darkness.

Rather than selling our shadow for the illusion of control, we should learn to embrace its presence, designing light that is not just functional, but poetic responsive, alive, and in harmony with the world it inhabits.

www.nultylighting.co.uk

by Ellie Walton