Lighting is what turns a court from a summer thing into something used all year. In northern Europe that is not a small gain: a court with no lights is unusable after about four in the afternoon for a third of the year.
It is also the part of a court build most likely to annoy the neighbours, and the only part that becomes expensive to add later. Both are worth getting right the first time.
How much light a home court actually needs
Sports lighting is specified in lux — light landing on the surface — and the honest range for a home court is 150 to 250 lux average across the playing area. That is enough to track a ball cleanly, read the rim, and see other players' feet.
For context, EN 12193 is the European sports-lighting standard, and it sets required levels by class of play: international competition at the top, recreational and training at the bottom. A garden court sits firmly in the bottom class. Clubs and schools running fixtures need to satisfy the standard properly; a home court does not, and specifying to competition levels is how people end up with a floodlit car park.
Two numbers matter as much as the average:
- Uniformity. The ratio of minimum to average light across the court. Aim for 0.5 or better. Uneven light is worse than less light — the eye adapts to the bright patch and the dark corner disappears.
- Colour temperature. 4000 K neutral white is the right choice outdoors. 5700 K daylight fittings look brighter for the same lux, but the extra blue increases perceived glare and sky glow, and reads as harsher from a neighbouring window. A CRI of 70 or above is fine; 80 is better and costs little now.
Mounting height is the main lever
The single biggest influence on whether a court is comfortable to play on is how high the light sits. Height does two things at once: it flattens shadows, and it moves the fitting out of the eyeline of a player looking up at the rim.
As a rule of thumb, mount at roughly a quarter to a third of the longest dimension of the playing area. In practice:
- Half court or driveway — 5 m and above
- Full court — 6 to 8 m
Below about 4 m, no amount of optics fixes the glare, because the fitting is simply in the field of view of every shot. This is why garden floodlights on the house wall and bollard-style path lights never work: they are at the wrong height, and they throw light along the ground rather than down onto it.
One fixture, or four
Both approaches are legitimate. Which is right depends on the court.
A single fixture, mounted high behind the hoop, lights a half court well. The geometry is favourable — the light comes from behind the shooter, so it falls on the rim and the key without shining back into anyone's eyes, and there is no second pole to find space for. This is the usual answer for a driveway or half court.
Four fixtures, one at each corner, is the conventional layout and the better one for a full court or anything wider than about 10 m. Cross-lighting from four directions is what produces the uniformity figure above, and it removes the single hard shadow a one-sided setup leaves under the backboard.
A full court lit from one end will always have a dim far baseline. If that is where people play, light it properly.
Glare and spill — the neighbour problem
Glare is light reaching the player's eye directly. Spill is light landing where nobody asked for it. They are solved differently.
For glare, use full-cutoff fittings with asymmetric or forward-throw optics, aimed so the main beam points down the court rather than out of it. A fitting aimed close to horizontal throws most of its output past the court and into whatever is behind it.
For spill, the useful measure is vertical illuminance at a neighbour's window. UK guidance from the Institution of Lighting Professionals sets limits by environmental zone, tightening after a night-time curfew — broadly around 10 lux pre-curfew and 2 lux after in a suburban setting, 5 and 1 in a rural one. Those are small numbers, and they are achievable with correct aiming and shields; they are not achievable with a pair of 200 W security floods bolted to a gable.
Practical measures that work: aim away from boundaries, fit external shields or louvres on the boundary side, mount high and aim steeply down, and choose 4000 K over 5700 K.
Wiring — and the one thing that must happen first
Run the duct before the base goes down. This is the same trap as the hoop footing, and it costs the same to fix: once tiles are laid over a prepared base, getting a cable across the court means lifting it.
Put a 63 mm duct with a draw cord in while the ground is open, even if lighting is a later phase. It is a trivial cost during groundworks and the only cheap moment it will ever have.
The rest is ordinary outdoor electrical work:
- SWA cable, buried at a sensible depth — commonly around 450 mm under a garden, deeper under a drive — with marker tape above it.
- RCD protection and a local isolator at the pole.
- IP65 or better on every fitting and joint. Outdoor courts get driven rain and hose-down cleaning.
- A qualified electrician for the connections. In England and Wales, new outdoor circuits are notifiable work under Part P.
Mounting and aiming are often DIY-friendly. The connection is not, and the certificate matters when you sell the house.
Controls
Fit a push-to-run timer, not a motion sensor. PIR sensors are wrong for a court: players stand still to shoot, and the lights drop out at exactly the wrong moment. A timer that runs for a set period and then switches off also solves the commonest cause of neighbour complaints, which is lights left on all night by accident.
If the court is lit near a boundary, a curfew timer that hard-stops at a fixed hour is worth more than any amount of good intent.
A purpose-built option
For MegaSlam hoops, the Game Light mounts to the hoop's main column at 5.3 m and puts 12,000 lumens across a half court. It is the single-fixture approach above, with the height and the geometry already solved and no separate pole, footing or wall fixing to arrange. It suits a half court well; a full court still wants the four-corner layout.
Before you commit
- Duct goes in before the base. Everything else can wait.
- Decide half court or full — it settles one fixture versus four.
- Mount at 5 m minimum, higher if you can.
- Specify 4000 K, CRI 70+, IP65+, full cutoff.
- Check what the light does at the boundary, at night, before you fix anything permanently.
- Timer, not PIR.