What Are The Main Types Of Street Lights?

Rising electricity bills and frequent maintenance are draining your budget. Outdated street lights offer poor visibility and fail often, creating safety risks and constant headaches for your team.

The main types of street lights are High-Pressure Sodium (HPS), Light Emitting Diode (LED), and Solar LED¹. LED is the modern standard for grid-power due to its high efficiency and long life, while solar is ideal for areas without grid access, offering energy independence.

Choosing the right street light feels overwhelming. You have to balance upfront costs with long-term savings, meet complex safety standards, and ensure reliability for years to come. A wrong choice leads to budget overruns, compliance failures, and public complaints. But making the right decision can secure massive energy savings, reduce maintenance to almost zero, and improve public safety overnight. In my 13 years in the lighting industry, I've helped hundreds of clients navigate this process. This guide gives you the clear, numbers-backed data you need to make a confident decision and end your search.

Lamp vs. Fixture: How do you choose the right technology and housing for your road?

Your old fixtures are failing, but you're not sure if you need a whole new unit or just a new bulb. This confusion can lead to buying the wrong parts or overspending.

Think of the "lamp" as the light source (like an LED chip or HPS bulb) and the "fixture" as the protective housing that holds it and directs the light. Choosing the right combination is key for performance, durability, and meeting project requirements for light distribution.

When I talk to project managers, many focus only on the lamp's technology, like LED versus HPS. That's only half the story. The fixture, or housing, is just as critical. It protects the sensitive electronics from water, dust, and impact (look for IP65/IP66 ratings). It also manages heat, which is vital for an LED's long lifespan. A poorly designed fixture will cause even the best LED chips to fail early.

More importantly, the fixture's Optics² shape how light is distributed on the ground.

Key Housing Considerations

• Material: Die-cast aluminum is the standard for a reason. It's durable and excellent at dissipating heat, extending the life of the internal components.
• IP Rating³: An IP65 rating is the minimum for outdoor use. It ensures the fixture is dust-tight and can withstand water jets. For harsh environments, IP66 or higher is better.
• Optics: The lens inside the fixture determines the light distribution pattern (e.g., Type II, III, IV). You must match the optics to your road or area's geometry to ensure uniform light and avoid dark spots.

Choosing the right fixture ensures your investment is protected and performs exactly as specified for decades.

Standards to Specs: How do you map RP-8 and EN 13201 to your project?

You're told your project must comply with RP-8 or EN 13201, but these documents are dense and confusing. You risk over-specifying and wasting money, or under-specifying and failing inspections.

These standards simply tell you how much light is needed for a specific type of road to be safe. They translate complex requirements into clear targets for Illuminance⁴ (brightness) and uniformity, which you can then match to a product's specifications.

Let's break this down. As a supplier, I see clients get stuck here all the time. Think of standards as a recipe. They don't tell you which brand of flour to buy, but they tell you how much you need. RP-8 (from the Illuminating Engineering Society, or IES, common in North America) and EN 13201 (common in Europe) classify roads based on traffic volume and pedestrian use. Your job is to find a light that delivers the "recipe" for your specific road class.

Translating Standards to Product Specs

First, identify your road class in the standard. Then, look for two main things:

1. Illuminance/Luminance: How bright the surface should be. Measured in lux or footcandles (fc).
2. Uniformity: The ratio of average to minimum light levels. This prevents dangerous dark spots between poles.

Here’s a simplified table to show how this works.

With this information, you can ask a supplier like me for a "100W LED fixture that delivers an average of 15 lux with a 3:1 uniformity ratio using Type III optics." That's a request we can act on immediately, providing you with a photometric layout to prove compliance.

LED vs. HPS in Numbers: What efficiency, lifespan, and maintenance can you budget for?

You know LED is better, but you need hard numbers for your budget proposal. Without a clear cost-benefit analysis, it's hard to justify the upfront investment over cheaper, older HPS technology.

LEDs offer over 75% energy savings, last 5-10 times longer than HPS, and require almost no maintenance. This translates directly into lower electricity bills and operational costs, with a typical payback period of 2-4 years.

When I present the numbers to procurement directors, the decision becomes simple. The initial cost of HPS is tempting, but the total cost of ownership is a budget killer. Let's look at a direct comparison based on a typical 150W HPS equivalent.

Head-to-Head: LED vs. HPS

The U.S. Department of Energy has documented these savings extensively. Cities like Los Angeles saved over $10 million annually after their conversion. The numbers are clear. While an HPS lamp is cheap, you'll pay for it multiple times over in electricity and maintenance crews. An LED fixture is an asset that pays for itself. And regarding quality issues like the "purple light" phenomenon you may have seen, that's a sign of low-quality phosphor degradation. At Besenled, we use high-stability chips and robust quality control to ensure color integrity for the entire lifespan of the fixture.

Form Factors that Perform: Which housing—Cobrahead, shoebox, or post-top—fits best?

You need to light a road, a parking lot, and a park, but using the same fixture everywhere is inefficient. Choosing the wrong form factor leads to poor light distribution, wasted energy, and a mismatched aesthetic.

Match the form factor to the function: use Cobraheads for roadways, Shoebox Fixtures⁶ for large open areas like parking lots, and Post-Tops for pedestrian pathways and decorative applications. This ensures optimal performance and efficiency.

This is a common final step in the selection process. After you've chosen your technology (LED) and determined your required specs (lux levels and distribution type), you select the physical housing that delivers it. Each form factor is engineered for a specific job.

Matching Form Factor to Application

• Cobrahead Fixtures⁷

  • What it is: The classic, traditional street light shape with a distinct head that juts out over the road.
  • Best for: Roadways and highways. Its design is perfect for holding optics like IES Type II and III, which cast long, rectangular patterns of light ideal for illuminating long stretches of road efficiently.
  • Why it works: It places the light source directly over the area that needs it most, minimizing light trespass into adjacent properties.

• Shoebox Fixtures

  • What it is: A rectangular, boxy fixture, often mounted on a pole with a straight arm (tenon mount).
  • Best for: Parking lots, sports courts, and large commercial areas. They are designed to hold IES Type IV and V optics, which create broad, circular or square patterns of light.
  • Why it works: They provide powerful, uniform illumination over wide areas, maximizing safety and visibility for both vehicles and pedestrians.

• Post-Top Fixtures⁸

  • What it is: A decorative fixture that sits directly on top of a pole.
  • Best for: Parks, university campuses, pedestrian walkways, and historic districts.
  • Why it works: They often prioritize aesthetics and creating a comfortable, welcoming ambiance. While they can be equipped with high-performance optics, their primary role is often to provide localized, human-scale lighting.

Choosing the right form factor is the final piece of the puzzle, ensuring the light not only meets technical standards but also fits the physical and aesthetic context of your project.

FAQ

What are the main types of street lights?

The primary types are High-Pressure Sodium (HPS), which are older and less efficient; grid-powered LED, which is the modern standard for efficiency and lifespan; and Solar LED, which operates off-grid and is ideal for remote locations or areas where trenching is too expensive.

Which is best: LED or HPS?

LED is definitively better. It uses over 75% less energy, lasts up to 10 times longer, and provides superior visibility with a higher Color Rendering Index (CRI). The total cost of ownership for LED is significantly lower than for HPS.

How do standards guide selection?

Standards like IES RP-8 and EN 13201 provide the minimum lighting requirements (illuminance and uniformity) for safety on different types of roads and public areas. These standards dictate the performance specifications your chosen street light must meet.

Do LEDs improve safety?

Yes, significantly. LEDs produce a white light with a high CRI (70+), which helps drivers and pedestrians better distinguish colors and objects at night compared to the monochromatic yellow glow of HPS (20-30 CRI). Better uniformity also eliminates dangerous dark spots.

What housing should I use?

Choose the housing based on the application. Use Cobraheads for roadways, Shoebox fixtures for parking lots and large areas, and decorative Post-Tops for walkways and parks. Each is designed to distribute light effectively for its specific environment.

Conclusion

Choosing the right street light means matching modern LED technology with the correct fixture and standards. This ensures long-term savings, superior safety, and reliability for any infrastructure project.

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