Up light vs Soffit Lighting ?

[Jay Roman]

Debating on which lighting to go with.

After reading this article, this guy makes a great argument for up lighting.

Why Up Lighting Is a Better Alternative to Recessed Soffit Lighting

Despite being the industry standard, soffit lighting is almost never the best way to light the facade of a home. Consider up lighting your home instead.

blog.lightupnashville.com

Although he is strictly speaking on how to make your house look beautiful.

Does anyone believe that uplights may provide better lighting for IPCams than soffit mounted lights?

Or is the obvious answer that the uplights would cause a glare/interference with the video stream from the lights?

I would love to hear everyone's opinion.





VS

 

[Teken]

Lighting from above is preferred as it offers basic safety & security that up lighting can’t address:

Security: Fixtures are out of reach from casual interference and can’t be moved or disabled easily.

Safety: No worries about electrical safety with respect to water penetration and humans as most fixtures will be installed under the eves providing better weather protection.

Coverage: Down lighting provides wider area coverage to the FOV that directly improves the cameras ability to see while reducing ghosting & blur. It also reduces possible glare to cameras but this is highly dependent upon angle and output power of the fixture.

Uplighting as you stated offers great curb appeal to accent the home and believe using a combination of both offers benefits also. The obvious problems to ground mounted lighting is its easily disabled / stolen. Offers high risks to humans and animals if not installed correctly with respect to low voltage / high voltage wiring and installation.

Every year more than a dozen people are summarily electrocuted by ground mounted lighting due to improper installation and water penetration. The most common cause is rodents chewing on the wires and electrifying the ground unbeknownst to human!

Human comes along to water the grass or it just recently rained. This is why all ground mounted lighting regardless of low vs high voltage be protected by a GFCI outlet / breaker. The same can be used for fixtures attached to exposed side of a building not under cover.

 

[wittaj]

While the ground up lighting to most people is more aesthetically pleasing, for all the reasons above, the above lights are better, and from a camera standpoint. My neighbor had to turn his landscaping lights off because they were all interfering with the cameras at night. It was like they could not be placed in any worse location and blinded every camera....and that is what you get when you do not use a test rig at every location first either...