Tennis lighting has not changed much in the past 40 years. Ever since LED entered the lighting market, tennis courts have been illuminated with area flood light fixtures from various brands. They appeared bright enough but didn’t exactly give light to where it needed to be.

Bieber Lighting launched a new line of LED luminaires designed to meet the lighting needs of professional and competition level tennis courts. The Tennis-Brite LED series has three versions, Tennis-Brite Competition™ 600W, Tennis-Brite Pro™ 400W and the Tennis-Brite Residential™ 200W. These products are assembled in the U.S.A with 60% US made components. 

(Image: Bieber Lighting)

Founded in 1929, Bieber Lighting has specialized in outdoor lighting systems designed for the task, with the introduction of the EM Series Fluorescent. In the 21st century LED lighting revolution, Bieber Lighting created a LED division focused on industry specific lighting needs. Its designers worked with several tennis professionals asking them for feedback on the impact of LED lighting on the court.

The first issue is glare. The more LEDs on fixtures the more glare they produce. In the opinion of professional players, a 200W LED fixture with 100 LEDs is the last choice for a tennis court. Why? When chasing a ball with your eyes, each LED puts a streak in your vision. Multiply that by 100 and it makes players hard to see the tennis ball after looking past a few LED fixtures. The same can be said of a 1000 watt metal halide.

Ricc Bieber CEO of Bieber Lighting said “Our philosophy is: Less Is More. Fewer points of light is better with all ball chasing sports." The 600W Tennis-Brite Competition fixture has only six high powered LEDs. The company’s customized optical glass lenses push the light down and to the middle of the court and not toward the players’ eyes. Each LED is aimed at the specific spot on a tennis court. As a result, depending on where players are standing. Only one of the six high-powered LEDs is in the players’ line of sight. This provides an even amount of light on the court.

The Second issue is the color of light. Feedbacks from professionals indicated they do not like playing under the bluish color of LEDs due to a low Color Rendering Index (CRI).  Bieber Lighting’s 400-watt Tennis-Brite could have about the same lux as a 600-watt high CRI.

High CRI is best for High Definition (HD) photography and film. Filming tennis competitions on low CRI tennis courts distort colors and skin tones. Bluish LEDs make tanned skin tones purplish and fare skin tones appear gray like their zombies. Our HD LEDs give the same light as the Sun’s true colors.

Lumens vs Lux 

Why is Lux more important? The difference is where the light is measured. Lumens are measured at the LED chip then multiplied by the amount of chips. Lux is measured at distances away from the light source. Two very different numbers. In the same way light is measured on the court. Why do different LED manufacturers lights that have equal watts do not have equal Lux? It is mostly because of their optics. Lower grade polymer optics cannot compare to our high-grade optical glass.

The Tennis-Brite™ combines high-grade optical glass and precise optics designed to push lumens further and this enables the lower wattage of our LED chips to have higher Lux on the ground with fewer chips in a fixture. Again, “Less Is More.” The Tennis-Brite™ also saves electricity. It comes with a standard 10 year warranty, a 15 year extended warranty, and free maintenance for 100,000+ hours.