Baseball and softball are two very popular variants of the same sport. Proper illumination of indoor baseball and softball facilities are among the chief prerequisites for high-quality games to take place. There are several indoor facilities that offer baseball and softball practice sessions. But many of them lack proper illumination, especially in the backyard and batting cage. For the players to play at their optimum level, the uniformity of brightness across the batting cage and the rest of the field is very important. If the brightness is uneven, it will cause serious miscalculations on the part of the players, and they would try and avoid such facilities. In this light, it is very important for entrepreneurs and institutions running indoor baseball and softball facilities that they illuminate the batting cage turf as well as the remaining areas of the field to match the highest standard.
Backyard Batting Cage
The indoor batting cage offers an excellent opportunity to practice baseball in an enjoyable manner. The lights ceiling for indoor softball practices is generally lower than a tennis field a basketball court. So, we need specially created LED lighting designs to illuminate backyard and indoor cage. Inside the batting cage, the baseball moves at a very high speed. It is necessary that the players are able to see the ball clearly, without being distracted by glare. The primary objective of batting cage lighting is to create a field of uniform illumination across its perimeter.
Batting Cage with LED Lights
For the low bay lighting of the indoor batting cage, we should use the larger beam angle. The angle of the LED lights determines how wide the beam spread will be on the ground. The beam light spread is directly related to the angel of LED lights. For batting cage lighting, we generally choose 90 or 120-degree.
We can calculate the amount of power required and for this, we need to understand what factors are guiding the power selection. General batting cage needs brightness in the range of 150 to 250 lux. This amount of brightness would be just fine for indoor use. Now to choose the power, we require 2.5W LED lights for every 1m2. Therefore, if the softball field measures 100 sq. meter, we require 250W LED lights. However, this is a rough estimation. For more precise calculation, you need to talk to a lighting designer.
Inside the field, a baseball can have a speed of 100 km/h. In order to ensure a proper vision of the fast-moving fall, the batting cage needs to be properly illuminated.
Here is how you can light up the indoor softball playing area properly.
1. Brightness or Lux Level Required
The ground lux is one of the mechanisms to describe brightness. This is basically a calculation of how much light the batting cage turf would receive. Generally speaking, the lighting requirement is in the range of 300 to 500 lux. This level of brightness is ideal for recreational and training purposes. The number of powers required for this purpose depends on the height of the ceiling and area of the batting cage turf.
2. Lighting Uniformity
Besides adequate and appropriate brightness, we also need to make sure that the illumination has high uniformity across the turf. This means that the brightness is same across the entire length and breadth of the batting cage and the remaining turf.
To work out uniform brightness in the batting cage, we can the following formula:
Minimum Lux: Average Lux or Minimum Lux: Maximum Lux equals to 1. However, for the recreational purposes, the indoor batting cage and softball field should have a uniformity of 0.5 to 0.6.
Discussion
There are a number of ready-to-use LED backyard batting cage lighting systems available on the market. They use the latest technology to understand the needs of the playing environment inside indoor facilities and design a lighting system that can effectively address the needs. Usually, these lighting systems come as a kit of containing several components include the pole and the light. These lightings are available in different capacity and power. In order to understand how much light you need for the backyard batting cage, you can take help of a lighting designer or even the store manager from where you plan to procure the lights. Keep the measurements ready with when you visit the store to check out on the sports lighting options for indoor baseball and softball facilities.
Baseball is characterized by power and speed. In order to achieve the highest level of performance, players need to train themselves very hard. But the competition at the top level is very intense and the margin between the winner and the loser is very small. If the environment at the batting cage is not optimized to produce the best from individual players, their competitiveness would suffer. Uniform and effective illumination of the backyard and batting cage are necessary to keep the standards of the game high. What is important to achieve is that the light should be even across the entire area. No part should have less or more light than any other part of the field.
Conclusion
There are several types of indoor baseball facilities. Most of them are used for practice and recreational purposes. The lighting fixtures in batting cage needs to match the standard so that the players enjoy an ideal environment for the game. There are indoor facilities that allow high-level competitive matches. These facilities need to maintain a very high standard of uniform illumination on the field. And, this is not an easy job. This is a specialized task of a light designer. A lot of these lighting solutions are available online also.
We hope the information provided here will help you a great deal in understanding the technical nuances of backyard batting cage lighting and the options that are available in the category of lighting. However, if you feel the need for more information or want to talk to a qualified lighting designer, we would be happy to help you. You can contact us with your plans and proposals, and we will make sure that they are delivered to your satisfaction.