Holiday Lighting for Office Parks and Campuses

An office park is not a house with more roofline. It is a set of buildings, a sign at the road, a few parking lots, some walkways and a lobby or two. The people who see it are either driving in at 7:30 in the morning or leaving after dark at 5:15. Office park holiday lighting has to work for both of those moments, and it has to look like one property, not five buildings that each did their own thing.

Start with who actually sees the lights

Before picking anything, think about the traffic pattern. In December it is dark before most people leave work, so the evening drive out is when the lighting gets seen the most.

The priority order on most campuses is simple:

• The main entrance and monument sign. Everyone passes it twice a day. Visitors use it to find you.
• The front elevation of the building people walk into. Usually the one facing the main lot.
• Walkways and common areas between parking and doors, and any courtyard people cross.
• Secondary buildings and back lots. Last, and sometimes not at all.

If the budget is limited, spend it from the top of that list down. A lit entrance with dark back buildings looks fine. Lit back buildings with a dark entrance looks like a mistake.

Entrances and signage

The monument sign at the road is the most valuable spot on the property. It sits at eye level for drivers, it is close to the street, and it already carries your name.

Good options here are clean and restrained. Outline the top edge of the sign wall. Light the shrubs or low plantings in front of it. If two brick or stone pillars flank the drive, treat them as a matched pair. Keep the lettering itself clear. Nobody should have to read the property name through a tangle of strands.

Watch for a few practical things:

• Power. Monument signs often have limited power out at the road. Know what is available before planning a lot of lights there.
• Sightlines. Nothing added near a driveway exit should block a driver’s view of oncoming traffic.

Building facades: pick one line and repeat it

Commercial buildings around Nashville are rarely simple gables. You get flat roofs with parapets, metal coping, stone or brick veneer and a lot of glass. Each needs a different approach. It helps to pick one strong horizontal line per building rather than trying to trace every edge.

Flat roofs and parapets

On a flat roof, the parapet cap or coping is usually the line to follow. It gives a crisp outline that reads from across a parking lot. Attachment matters here. Commercial coping and gutters are expensive to repair. Red Nose Lites uses clips sized to the roof edge or gutter lip and never drives staples, nails or screws into fascia, trim or shingles. On a commercial building, ask any installer directly how they attach.

Glass entries and canopies

Glass lobbies are hard to light well from outside. The canopy edge or the frame around the entry is usually the better target. A lit canopy over the front door marks the entrance clearly and does not fight the glass.

Common areas and walkways

Walkways are where holiday lighting also makes the place feel looked after. December evenings are dark and often wet. A few lit trees or planting beds along the path from the lot to the front door make that walk more pleasant.

• Use trees and planters that are already there. A row of trees along a sidewalk gives a lot of effect for the effort.
• Keep cords and lights off walking surfaces. Nothing should cross a path where someone carrying a laptop bag could catch a foot.
• Courtyards with benches and a few trees are a good second priority after the entrance. They are often seen from office windows too, and tenants notice.

Your existing parking lot and path lighting stays exactly as it is. Holiday lights are decoration, not safety lighting.

Keeping multiple buildings consistent

This is where campuses most often go wrong. One building gets warm white, the next gets multicolor, a third gets a different bulb shape because it was added a year later. From the road it looks like three tenants decorating on their own.

Set a few rules for the whole property and stick to them:

• One color. Warm white suits most office settings. Pick it once and use it everywhere.
• One bulb style. The same type across every building and every tree.
• The same lines on each building. If building A gets its parapet and entry canopy lit, building B gets the same treatment.
• The same schedule. Everything on and off at the same times. A campus where one building is dark at 6 p.m. and another is still lit looks half finished.

Strands cut to length help with consistency too. Each run fits its edge, so you do not get loose tails on one building and gaps on another. Red Nose Lites uses custom cut commercial grade LED strands on every install.

Getting a price: phone first, site visit if you want one

You do not need to schedule a site meeting to get a price. Red Nose Lites quotes over the phone. Call (615) 595-9686, describe the buildings, the sign and the areas you want lit, and you get a price on that call. For many office properties, especially one or two buildings with a sign out front, that is all it takes.

A site visit is available if you want one. Some property managers prefer it for a large campus with several buildings or an unusual layout. It is your choice, not a requirement. You can also send the details through the quote form.

What is included

For a property manager, the main value is not having to think about the lights once they are up. Every Red Nose Lites install includes:

• Design
• Custom cut commercial grade LED strands
• Installation by insured crews
• In season maintenance, with a 24 hour service guarantee during the season
• Takedown after the holidays
• Off season storage, so nothing ends up in your maintenance room

There are no contracts and no long term commitments. If you want to light the entrance and one building this year and decide about the rest later, that works. The full process is on the how it works page, and there is more on commercial jobs on the commercial installation page.

What is not worth paying for

• Back of house areas. Loading docks, service drives and building sides facing a tree line. Nobody sees them.
• Rooflines only visible from far away. If it cannot be seen from your lots, your entrance or the road people arrive on, skip it.
• Lighting every tree. One lit row along the main walkway beats scattered trees across the whole property.

Timing

Many commercial properties want lights up before Thanksgiving, so the campus looks ready when people come back to work that Monday. Getting a price in September or October leaves plenty of time to settle the scope before then.

Red Nose Lites is family owned and has been lighting Middle Tennessee properties since 2006, including Brentwood, Franklin and Nashville. Call (615) 595-9686 with a description of the property, or request a quote online.