Most billboards – but not all – have lights to make their ads legible at night. In this Billboard Mastery podcast we’re going to review all the lessons we’ve learned about lighting billboards and how to make the best decision on what type of lights to use – or if you need to use any lights at all.
Episode 120: Lessons Learned On Lights Transcript
To light or not to light, that is the question, at least for most billboard builders and owners. This is Frank Rolfe with the Billboard Mastery Podcast. We're going to talk about the lighting of billboards, what we've learned about billboard lighting over the decades. The first main question for any billboard builder or owner is, do I need lights on a sign? So that's worthy of consideration. Do you really need to place light fixtures on a billboard? Or can you leave it where it's just to be seen by daylight only? Well, I've owned billboards that have no lights on them, and here's the problem when the billboard has no lights. You can't sell the billboard to anybody who has a product which is sold after dark. And remember that throughout America, with daylight savings time still in operation, in the wintertime it often can be dark by 5 or 6 o'clock, and that's about the time of rush hour. So you're really limiting your audience when you have no lights. And good advertisers, motels, hotels, fast food restaurants, truck stops, all those things that rely on traffic often up until 2 or 3 in the morning, sometimes all night, there are no longer potential clients for you.
And that can often be a really big loss. So I would say in most cases, yes, let's put lights on the billboard. But that comes with the caveat that power is available, because sometimes it isn't. I once built a billboard at I-45 south of Dallas, and that's where I learned all about lights, because I never thought to ask if I could get power to it. It was on an interstate. How could you not get power to it? So I built the sign, big, beautiful steel monopole, and then I went to put power on it and called the power company. I even put the light fixtures on there, called the power company, and they said, well, there's no power there. I was enraged. I said, what do you mean there's no power there? I'm on the interstate highway. Of course there's power there. There's another sign just up the street with lights on it. Well, yeah, but see, we don't have any poles that go down to there. Well, put some poles in. Well, I can't because we don't have any easements there. We can't put power to your sign unless we can run a power line down to it, and we can't.
So I said, well, what do I got to do to make it happen? Well, you can go to the neighbor and see if you can tap into his power. You can guess where that went. I went to them, and they said, no, we don't want you touching anything with our power. So lo and behold, I built this sign, and I could not put lights on it. So the first question, if you're going to put lights on the sign, is can you? Is there electricity even available? And I tried on that sign, I tried out solar, because I really wanted to have lights on it. It was a total failure. The problem with solar lighting on billboards is it's not bright enough, it doesn't last long enough, and in periods where it's overcast for a week of nothing but rain, it doesn't even work. So I wasn't a big fan of solar, tried it. So to me, if you're going to go ahead and light a billboard, it has to either be with halophane lights or it has to be with direct current lights, but it has to have electrical current. Got to have the power. If you don't have the power, well, then maybe you can't put any lights on the sign.
Also, if you're looking at taking an old wooden sign that never had lights on it and put it back in operation, once again, you probably can't put any lights on it because it's probably grandfathered saying that you can't. Or it's structurally just can't handle the additional weight. So the answer to the question, should I light or not, is normally determined by whether you can. Because if you can, you're going to, and if you can't, well, then you can't. That doesn't mean you can't rent the sign to somebody. I've rented many non-lighted billboards. And obviously at a certain price, it still works for people, even if they're open late at night. If you've got a Taco Bell, it's open until two in the morning, so you wish you had lights. Well, even without lights, what the heck, you're still reaching people during the daylight hours, and that's the majority of the hours of the day. So, but they're probably going to get a much lower rent if you don't have lights on it, because it's just not going to reach as many viewers. Now, if we've determined that we are going to put lights on the sign, then the question is, how many and what brightness?
Because that can have a lot to do with how much it costs you to light the sign. So how do I solve that? Go out and look at what the other signs on the street, what they're using. Sometimes when you go out in rural areas, you ever notice that instead of having three or four halophane fixtures on there, they only have two? They do that because they can get away with it. Gives them half the power bill, half the repair and maintenance issues. Now, when you're out in the rural area, there's not a lot of competing light, there's not a lot of ambient light, not a lot of street lights out there, not a lot of premise signs. So they just realize, a couple fixtures would work. It's not as bright as in the city, but then again, it's not as bright outside as it is in the city. But if you're adding a sign into that inventory, if you're going to be owning another billboard in that area and everyone's running on two light fixtures, well, then that's how many you probably should do. It's just follow, keep up with the Joneses, follow exactly what they're doing. In the city, they're brighter. In the country, not as bright.
No reason for you to be the brightest sign, no reason for you to have 100% more lights than the others do. You rarely get extra credit for that. You're going to burn a whole lot more power and bulbs to replace. So I would just kind of match what others are doing. But here's where it gets really bad is if you're in the city and everyone's using four fixtures or three fixtures and you decide to go with two. Because as long as you're keeping up with the Joneses, no one really complains. But if you suddenly became the darkest sign on the street, then that's really not going to work for you. People are going to say, hey, I drove by my sign. I hate it. It's too dim. Do something about it. Now you have the additional cost of adding to add lights to it. So let's try and keep up with your peers. Try to have as many light fixtures as they have. It will keep your customers much happier if they feel like they're getting as much attention brought to their sign as the others do. And when it comes to fixtures, don't go with some of this goofy stuff that people do.
I've seen people try and illuminate billboards using street lights. They'll hang a couple street lights over the top of the sign, trying to save a penny or two. No, you can't do that. Modern fixtures on billboards have prismatic lenses, which throw the light beautifully, where every inch of the sign has the same uniform glow. It's bright. It's directed. It's fantastic. Those other alternative things that people do sometimes doesn't work at all. They're so dim. The light is, if you don't have the light focused on the sign, it just doesn't work. So once again, keep up with the Joneses. Go with what everybody else is doing. Now, as far as how long you need to light the sign, I would often leave that up to the advertiser. If you put a 24-hour advertiser on there, you'll probably have to run the lights all night. And that's going to really tack on a lot of power cost. Because let's just look at it for a moment. If the average business closes at midnight, but another one stays open all night, that's going to tack on what? Six, seven hours of additional power? That's almost 100% more power than you're running with the standard advertiser.
In fact, in some cases, if someone wants to light it all night, you may have to charge a surcharge, an extra upcharge for them running that much additional power. But the option is at least there. You can set the time clock to accommodate whatever they want to do as far as how much time they are eliminated. Now, what about when things break? What about when a bulb goes out? Your timer didn't turn on, then what happens? Normally, you give a 25% deduction for every day in which the lights are not functioning. But if you ever notice the light's not functioning, you need to jump on that immediately. Because the advertiser rarely drives by the sign. And if he drives by there that one time to show it off to his wife, and the lights are off, he's going to think they've been off forever. And he's going to demand that 25% discount. He may get so mad at you, he wants to cancel the sign. So it makes good common sense to drive the signs periodically to make sure that those lights are working. And here's a tip, if you don't want to have to go drive out there yourself, if it's two hours out, find another business that can see the sign through their window, maybe a convenience store or something like that, and call them periodically and ask them, hey, are the lights on?
Can you look out the window and tell me if the lights are on? And they can save you a big long drive by letting you know that. Also, when the bulbs start to burn out, just like at your house, typically they all burn out at the same time. If they were all put in at the same time, they've been burning the same amount of hours, and you're going to go out and change a ball, well, you might as well change all of them because the others will soon go too. The bottom line to it all is that lighting billboards has been going on since billboards were constructed. It's normally a good idea. Advertisers like it a lot, but there are some subtle nuances you have to be aware of. This is Frank Rolfe, the Billboard Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoy this. Talk to you again soon.