Safe, efficient & well-lit parking environments
Car Parks
A car park is the hardest environment in the urban-infrastructure family to design well. The space has to feel safe — which means high vertical illuminance on faces and license plates, not just horizontal illuminance on the deck — and it has to feel low-energy, because most car parks run from dusk to past midnight and the operational cost compounds quickly. The two goals pull against each other, and resolving them is what the design is for.
How we approach car parks.
Vertical illuminance is the safety metric
Horizontal illuminance (lux on the ground) is the metric most schemes are designed to. For a car park, vertical illuminance — lux on a face or a license plate at 1.5 m above the deck — is the better safety proxy. CIBSE LG07 and BS 5489-1 both call out a vertical-to-horizontal ratio of 0.4–0.6 as the target for parking and circulation areas.
Achieving that ratio requires optics with a wider lateral spread than a typical area-lighting head. Asymmetric Type V or Type IV distributions, mounted at 8–12 m on perimeter columns, deliver the spread; mid-deck pole runs at the same height fill in the centres.
Glare and spill onto neighbours
Car parks frequently sit adjacent to residential or hospitality zones, and unrestricted glare from a perimeter pole is an immediate source of complaint. The standard tool is a back-light shield or asymmetric house-side optic that drops the light intensity behind the pole to near zero. CIE 150 environmental zones (E1–E4) set the limits: a typical Cypriot edge-of-town car park sits in E2 (low-density residential surround), which caps luminous intensity into windows at 7,500 cd above 90°.
Occupancy and adaptive control
The operational pattern of a car park — high occupancy at peak, near-empty in the small hours — makes it the canonical use case for occupancy-aware dimming. Microwave or PIR detectors at each pole drop the deck illuminance to 30% when no movement has been detected for a configurable interval (typically 60–120 seconds), and ramp back up within 0.5–1.0 seconds when a vehicle or pedestrian re-enters. The energy saving is substantial: typical real-world figures sit at 40–60% versus an always-on baseline.
Astro-clock dimming on the perimeter pole runs sets a baseline schedule beneath the occupancy layer — closing-time setback, full off where local regulation permits, partial dim where it doesn't.
Standards and compliance
BS 5489-2 covers car parks specifically and is the most directly applicable standard in the Cyprus market. CIBSE LG07 (Office Lighting, but with a parking annex) and EN 12464-2 (Outdoor Workplaces) cover overlapping ground. CIE 150 zone-classification is the framework for limiting obtrusive light onto adjacent properties.
What every brief asks us.
- Vertical-to-horizontal illuminance ratio ≥ 0.4 for safety
- Asymmetric optics with house-side shielding for residential edges
- CIE 150 zone classification (typically E2 or E3)
- Occupancy-aware dimming with sub-second wake-up
- Astro-clock baseline schedule under the occupancy layer
- Pole heights 8–12 m for spread efficiency
Common questions.
- Why is vertical illuminance more important than horizontal in a car park?
- Safety perception depends on being able to see another person's face, not the ground in front of them. Vertical illuminance at 1.5 m above the deck is the metric that captures this. A high horizontal illuminance with a low vertical component looks bright but feels unsafe.
- How much energy does occupancy-aware dimming save?
- Real-world savings on a perimeter-and-deck car park scheme typically land between 40% and 60% versus a non-dimmed baseline. The exact number depends on the occupancy profile, the dim depth (most schemes drop to 30% when unoccupied), and the wake-up sensitivity of the controllers.
