We as a family have come to the conclusion the main reason for shops/businesses leaving lights on at night is for advertising reasons. That being said I have a feeling if we confronted a business owner to justify the wasted energy usage of leaving lights on during night hours when there is no way for the passing public to purchase products/services they will use security as an argument.

We think this is a poor argument for many lights left on for the following reasons.

The argument must be something like. Burglars etc… are less likely to break in or vandalise a shop/business if it is well lit and if someone does break in the general public (police etc…) will see the perpetrators more easily from outside if it’s well lit.

Burglars generally don’t want to be seen while they attempt to enter a shop/business, but at the same time to break into a property they need to be able to see what they are doing. For this reason they tend to choose break in points that are not easily seen by neighbors, the passing general public etc. For this reason it makes a lot of sense to add lighting to area that could be hidden entry points, but the best sort of lights are lights attached to movement sensors.

Someone walks by and the light goes on, if the location doesn’t get much foot traffic (like a fence enclosed business) your going to have neighbors look out their windows to see why the lights are on when the business is closed. Security lights like these make a lot of sense and are not a waste of energy since they turn off after the movement seizes.

That’s not the type of most lights on at night so security doesn’t appear to be a valid argument. Also if I walked by Tescos or almost any shop with products that need replenishing on a regular basis I would not automatically think criminal if I saw the lights on inside and people moving around, they might be re stacking shelves etc… On the other hand if a business normally has it’s lights off at night and I saw the lights on and people inside, burglary comes to mind and I might investigate further especially if the light source was a torch.

Case in point we have a dirt road on two sides of our property which is not lit at night, there’s a small factory unit behind us (owned by Vernons Interiors Skegness) that normally closes in the evening. One night my wife and son were out watching shooting stars (meteor shower was due) and they noticed the lights was on inside the unit (could see light under the door which is unusual).

We called Skegness police who investigated, but found nothing untoward, looked like the owners must have forgotten to turn the lights off that night. If they left the lights on every night we’d have never become concerned and called the police and though this was a false alarm, what if it wasn’t, for burglars to see inside the unit they’d HAVE to have a light source (turn the lights on or torches) and we’d notice it and call the police.

David Law

We live in the small seaside town of Skegness, and since an operation on my lower back (fused my spine after years of pain) I’ve been working on improving my fitness through walking around Skegness. Currently built up to around a mile or so walk a day, can finally get to the beach and back, which is much better than just walking around the block. Since my back (whole body) tends to hurt less late evening/night I’ve found we are tending to go for my daily walk at night in the dark sometimes.

Skegness is a typical small town, lots of small shops with a splattering of large shops like Tescos and Morrisons. Over the last few months as a family (Mum, Dad (me) and two youngest sons aged 15 and 12 years) we’ve become increasingly irritated (especially our 12 year old son) at the number of lights left on in shops and businesses within Skegness that really don’t need the lights on at night.

A quick example which is directly outside where we live is Morrisons. Morrisons closes at 8pm at night and the car park is pretty much disserted by 10pm strongly suggesting no one is working late at night. Despite this every single night Skegness Morrisons is lit up like a Christmas tree, I don’t think they ever turn the lights off (lights on 24hrs a day)!

This is a supermarket set back from the main road, so there is no passing trade that might happene to glance in a shop window and think, “ooh, 2 for 1 offer, I’ll buy some beans tomorrow”. So other than maybe security (which we feel is a false argument: will make a seperate post on this) there’s no good reason for leaving the lights on and wasting so much energy. Multiply this by all the Morrisons supermarket stores, according to their website over 350 stores and that’s a LOT of wasted energy just on lights at night! Morrisons store lights on at night (10pm to 6am) energy usage alone has to be equivelent to the the cost of lighting a small village!

Complete waste of energy.

So we’ve been discussing what we can do to persuade businesses/shops to turn lights off at night.

Hence this website, feel free to comment below with your ideas and thoughts.

David (AKA Dad)