Looking for any info on lighting, pros & cons.
Yes, there are LED lights available. My trainer had the indoor lighting redone a few years ago and it’s great. The old lights took time to fully warm up/come on, were not all that bright and had a yellowish cast. The new lights are brighter, whiter, turn on instantly and I’m sure save a bunch on the electric bill although I’m not privy to that information. LED lights also last a lot longer so you don’t have to deal with replacing lightbulbs that are suspended 16 feet in the air.
3 Likes
Yeah, the barn I ride at got new LED lights installed last year, both in the ring and in the various barns. I do not know the details, but I’m pretty sure that they were able to get assistance from some state program to upgrade the lights and offset some of the costs. So it may be worth it to see if there are any programs like that where you live.
Our indoor came with light fixtures that held huge (expensive) metal halide bulbs that took forever to warm up in the winter and once turned off couldn’t be turned back on for 30 min or so. I did research on how many lumens we needed and then got on Amazon to see what would work. I found lights that were cheaper than the bulbs we used to have, were easy to install, instant on/ off and provide plenty of light while using less power. Just look for shop lights that can handle high humidity.
Can’t think of any cons 
They are cheaper to run, handle cold and damp just fine, and best of all, no worries if lights get turned off when one rider doesn’t realize another is just about ready to go into the arena because at the flick of the switch they are immediately back on again.
I bet that feature alone saves a bunch of $$ because lights get used only when someone is in the arena rather than left on for whatever time when no-one is actually in it. That might sound silly, but if one person is doing a couple of horses, it’s not hard to have lights on in an unoccupied arena for 1/2 and hour or more and that certainly adds up.
To my eyeballs the light is also a better colour - ‘cleaner’ if you will.
We installed LED lights in my sister’s outdoor arena about 15 years ago. One of them was defective and failed after a few years, but was replaced under warranty.
Cheaper to run, instant on, bright lights, no warmup/cool down. I wouldn’t use anything else.
2 Likes
I have LED lights in my outdoor, and earlier this year replaced the indoor lights with LED.
The outdoor lights I used work great. The arena is 110’ x 220’ and we have 4 lights down each long side on 20’ish poles. Just looked up the spec sheet, they are Quasar LED shoebox floodlights, 300 watts and 42000 lumens.
The indoor had 8 old halogen lights and I had them replaced with 400 watt UFO lights. It’s still a little shadowy and I am having more rows installed next week.
We have circular LED lights in our arena now - put them in a couple weeks ago, and they are so much brighter than the old tube lights we had. We got them at a company that specializes in lightening, and they had a computer system to calculate the best types of lights and how many we needed for the space. I love the new lights, and they were easy to install.
We also have LED lights in the outdoor arena. They work great. I’ve had them for 6 years and absolutely no problems.
I just installed lights in our indoor from ProLighting and very happy. These:
https://www.prolighting.com/commercial-lighting/fixtures-high-low-bay-high-bays/round-led-high-bays/kt-rhled150-12c-840-vdim-p-g2.html
