Regardless of the season, outdoor lighting is important for many reasons: entertaining purposes, recreation of children, safety of visitors making their way to your door and even home security. But it isn't enough to have just any type of outdoor lighting, like the kind that attaches to the side of your home--you need outdoor lighting that covers a wider area of your deck or porch and lawn. You need Pier-mounted lighting.
Benefit
Pier-mounted lighting fixtures benefit homeowners in many ways, but probably the most important one is their ability to deter would-be burglars. Many people don't realize that criminals usually target homes that have limited lighting on the outside, as this makes their detection less possible for patrol cars, neighbors and others. Pier-mounted lighting fixtures illuminate a deck or porch (and part of the yard) so well that it leaves fewer places for a criminal to hide and not be seen.
Function
Another function of pier-mounted lighting fixtures, besides aiding with security lighting, is providing your children the proper overall lighting needed for any summer outdoor activities around the home. A solitary, or motion-sensor, wall-attached light cannot adequately meet this need, as those are limited to a specific area and specific movement.
Potential
Additionally, pier-mounted lighting fixtures have the potential to reduce possible accidents at your home. Entertaining visitors at outdoor cook-outs at your home could turn into an unexpected hospital visit or lawsuit nightmare if adequate outdoor lighting is not in use (during evening entertainment hours) and someone falls down your deck steps because of it.
But pier-mounted lighting provides a blanket of light (360 degrees of it) in a larger area, like an entire deck surface, helping to protect against that. A single light bulb placed above a door entrance in a wall-mounted light, or even a floodlight at the corner of your house, cannot do this, so neither is helpful for navigating a large deck or deck steps in the evening time.
Features
One other feature of pier-mounted lighting fixtures is the ability to use low-voltage lighting with them, saving money on electricity. Saving money on electricity and reducing unnecessary use of electrical resources is important for individual homeowners and the environment as a whole.
Misconceptions
While the lower voltage used with pier-mounted lighting can ensure that less electricity is used and that the light will be less glaring than the standard mounted wall light bulbs, some homeowners mistakenly think that the lower voltage light will produce less light than the single light bulb mounted by their front door.
This is a misconception, since the pier-mounted light will produce a 360-degree light projection from its place atop your deck, but the wall-mounted light will not.
Styles
You can find a pier-mounted lighting fixture to match almost any style of home; however, since these lights are not sheltered from the elements, the materials used to manufacture them (iron and aluminum) are not as diverse, obviously, due to weather necessity.