Equestrian lighting can often be difficult to get right.
You need a safe environment for both horse and rider, which means you need the floor area in your arena, stables, yard, field, or manège to be lit as uniformly as possible to avoid too many shadows.
Shadows, especially dark shadows, can often cause a horse to spook if it has not been trained to be used to shadows or is not familiar with the area.
The last thing you want as a rider is for a horse to spook and jump sideways, change direction quickly, or worse – buck, rear, or bolt.
Ideally, you want to feel in control of your horse at all times. So, creating as calm and familiar an atmosphere for the horse, with as few distractions or ‘dangers’ as possible, will help towards keeping your horse focussed on its training and the instructions given by its rider.
How do you create a uniformly lit horse riding arena?
There are a few things that you can do to minimise shadows and create uniform lighting across the area you use to train or ride your horse.
Ensure lighting columns are raised
Lighting a horse riding arena or stable yard with lighting from too short a height can restrict the light distribution, creating dark spots from the poor coverage.
The CORE Equestrian Floodlight can extend up to 3.5m with the provided light stand.
Distribute the floodlights uniformly around the area.
Each floodlight should be placed so that the light provided by each lamp overlaps the light provided by its neighbouring lamps.
This will help create a uniform distribution of light and reduce shadowing.
When lighting a fenced off area, it is a good idea to recess the floodlights a little from perimeter, allowing for greater light intensity along the width of the horse riding area and reducing the sharp cut off of light due to the fencing.
By increasing the intensity of light nearer the perimeter of the horse arena or stable yard and reducing any potential shadowing you also reduce the likelihood of a horse spooking as it approaches a turn.
Ensure lighting is arranged symmetrically around the equine arena.
While it may be more affordable to offset lights to cover a broader area with fewer lamps, this can often result in less illumination than is required for optimal riding conditions.
By using a symmetrical configuration for your equine arena lighting and mirroring your lamps across both lengths of the area, the illumination provided will be much more uniform than if a staggered approach with less lamps is taken.
It is also wise to ensure that the lamps are angled appropriately to avoid unnecessary glare that could affect both the rider’s and horse’s vision.
The CORE Equine Floodlight has diffusers available that can spread the beam up to 50 or 80 degrees, helping to reduce glare and improve coverage. The Equine Floodlight also uses high quality Cree LEDs with lenses that are designed to reduce glare.
Ensure you are using the most effective equine arena lighting.
Providing a well-lit, safe, and enjoyable environment in which to ride and train your horses is the most important consideration when choosing your equine lighting solutions.
The lighting choice you make can impact riders’ comfort and safety.
The lights you choose should have sufficient illumination to provide adequate coverage of your arena.
For smaller arenas and manèges, you should use no less than 460W LED Floodlights and for larger arenas, where you’ll require lights with a larger illumination distance, it is recommended to use no less than 800W-1200W LED lights.
The CORE Equine Floodlight provides a 16,000 lumen output, which is equivalent to the light output provided by a 1500KW halogen light and can provide light over a distance of over 100 metres.
The CORE Equestrian Flood battery powered LED floodlight is very well suited to equestrian lighting.
The CORE Equestrian Floodlight is able to meet all of the above criteria required for sufficient equine lighting solutions and is rated IP65 for outdoor use. It is the perfect lighting solution for horse stables or arenas where permanent lighting fixtures are not an option such as when there is no planning permission available for the installation of permanent, mains powered equine floodlights.
As they are fully rated for outdoor use, our Equestrian Floodlights can be used for both outdoor or indoor areas where large areas require a uniform lighting and because they are battery powered, they can easily be set-up, taken down, and transported anywhere that they are required; great for when you want to use a field for training or riding rather than a manège.
Read more about the CORE Flood battery powered LED floodlight.