I say go with the easiest route then. 
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I would leave it natural. It blends in. I don’t think it stands out at all.
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Seems like the return on the time invested in painting would be minimal, at best! Other options are to get a UV light to speed the process or to stain them, but I’m on Leave It Be Team, too!
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Our development is the same. We’re required to have a front light post and a back light post, as there are no street lights in the development, AND there are no sidewalks; instead there are walking paths built behind all the houses, between our backyards. So the back light posts light those paths.
At first I found it a bit annoying. Being told what kinds of lighting I was required to have for the neighborhood. But as we’ve been here, I like it more and more. At our last house, we had regular street lights, and they were often burned out, or worse, flickering constantly all night, which kept Jim awake. The neighborhood there was expensive and ritzy, and the rather entitled residents freaked out about lights going out. There was a way to report the lights to the city, and everyone complained constantly that the lights were not immediately replaced. Now I like driving home at night, and with the greenspace in the middle of the cul-de-sac, and the soft house lights, it’s very cozy to come home to.
I vote leave them be. But if they bother you in a few months, you could put a small non-slip runner rug there to help hide it.
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Most of the homes were built in the80s so the current lighting is inefficient. We got led that will outlast us and take a lot less energy. I like the warmer glow.
We live in a high property tax area but we get good sevice like street washing and sweeping, garbage bin cleaning, tree trimmimg, security patrol, etc. It is so different than where we were .
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Yeah, ours was built in 81, and all the others were built in the two years before and after. Most of us have LED bulbs, and admittedly the street is dimmer than if there were real street lights, but the glow is warmer that the pinky-yellow of sodium lights.
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Obviously, we’re no where near any street lights and the whole pedestrian situation is different, so no one is required to have or not have exterior lights. We have one (really not-great) neighbor who LIGHTS UP their exterior so much that with a couple-acre wooded parcel between their lights (on the back of their outbuilding, btw) shines light on our property and out into the National Forest. It’s suuuuuper frustrating. It looks like a country biker bar over there with this super bright lighting… which nobody moves to the woods to live next to. It’s made a notable difference to our star gazing. Of course, there are no laws or ordinances that cover this (or any of the other un-neighborly things they do).
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Our back neighbor has a similar light because they have dogs they let out into a fenced yard. The yard is large so the light covers from the door to the property light, but also shines into our kitchen and can be seen through our front door. However, they are very respectful and leave it on only long enough for their dogs to do their business and then it is off. They never have it on late at night. We do have ordinances, but they are such nice neighbors that I don’t feel I would ever report them. If it bothers me, I will talk to them, but we don’t live in that part of our house anyway (I am in my craft room and Jim is in his studio or den).
You describe where we used to live in NC…no rules so there were a lot of disrespectful people who felt “entitled” with no thought for others…and they were not “rednecks”…
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These lights are on alllll night long. They could be on all day long, too for all know. They aren’t even on the house, but on outbuildings on the side opposite their house. I think they have them on their house, too, but those are hidden from our view by the outbuildings. One of them is clinically paranoid, so they won’t be turning them off for “security” reasons. Meanwhile, their property is just easier for “bad actors” to find and walk around.
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Yep–that is what actual FACTS say:
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A U.S. National Institute of Justice study concluded, “We can have very little confidence that improved lighting prevents crime”.
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Potential Negative Effects:
Poorly designed or excessive lighting can create shadows where criminals can hide or make it easier for them to see the contents of parked cars, potentially increasing the risk of vandalism and other crimes.
- Daytime Crime:
Most break-ins occur during the day, when daylight overshadows any security lighting, making the presence of lighting less of a factor.
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Yeah, there’s no changing their minds. Seriously, where we are it’d be easier for the houses to mostly disappear from the road on a dark night if the lights were off.
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Urg! So frustrating for you and anyone around you who cares.
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I wish more people knew the facts about this! I live in the innercity, so we have lots of light pollution. The football (soccer) stadium on the other side of the city uses purple lights on their field to encourage grass recovery or something, so from our bedroom window the sky is always purple in the distance! I can’t believe that’s even legal.
Street lights are good for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists, there’s much less risk of tripping and falling. Where I live that’s a real concern, we have a lot of after dark foot and bike traffic, but if you live in a place that doesn’t even have side walks or bike paths I’m assuming most people drive and don’t need street lights.
I know people think innercity areas are full of crime, and I’m not saying that never happens, but I think people overestimate the dangers and underestimate the danger of living in a rural or suburban area with fewer neighbours around. I think that often, having good neighbours, who have a good view of your property, are the best security system you can have. (But bad neighbours are risky! My friend’s house was almost cleared out by burglars on Christmas Eve, they actually drove away with a full van. Turned out their neighbours across the street had actually tipped off the burglars for a cut of the proceeds…)
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This is a rural and suburban thing in the US. There aren’t businesses to be walking to and from in places where there aren’t streetlights or sidewalks for the most part. Sure, people still walk their dogs or go for an evening stroll, but the level of foot traffic is not nearly so high where people are going from their (mostly) single-family homes to their cars to get to someplace other than their neighbors’ or maybe a school or park. You’re very unlikely to find high-density housing in neighborhoods without street lights. Even if people are going to use public transportation to get to their jobs, they are not unlikely to drive to a central pick-up point for that in a suburban or rural area in the US, at least in the West.
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The US and Europe are pretty different, but I live fairly rural and most of the (not domestic disputes, you see that everywhere) crime in my area is centered in the bigger cities. I know it’s only anecdotal, but having lived in the inner city, in suburbs, and now rural…those stereotypes ring very true here. Being just 15 minutes from a city, we occasionally get criminals driving into our area and then we see muggings, break-ins, car thefts, attempted murder, etc. This fall, we had a group of inner city youths steal a car and go joyriding through our little town, cops stopped them and they took off on foot, one escaped the police by running into the woods. They found him a few weeks later, sadly, caught in a swamp.
People still leave their doors unlocked out here in the country. I usually park in the same spot in my driveway…I once had a neighbor call and check on me to see if I had gone on vacation. He was worried someone would think no one was home because my truck (seemingly) was always in the same spot. Then he offered me homemade pie. He knew my DH’s parents when they lived here, but I had only met him once. We look out for our neighbors, too, even the annoying ones.
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I live in the middle of Chicago and we’ve had packages sit outside our house for days without anyone touching them. So I’d say crime/safety is highly neighborhood dependent.
I also love well lit streets. It’s always unnerving when we go back to Iowa and are driving around at night just how dark it is. I love coming back to the well lit city and actually being able to see things.
There are a lot of things I don’t like about living in the city, mainly traffic, but overall I think it’s a great experience.
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Absolutely this; in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Crime for sure happens in our rural area, but not necessarily the same crimes. If someone came out here where we are to break into a house, they would definitely be targeting and it would be way more serious, because getting to a house (gates, fences, long driveways, dogs, cameras) is riskier and getting away is also riskier. One way in and one way out and everyone notices an unusual vehicle doing unusual things (driving fast, stopping at driveways, etc.). Also, even before the extreme craziness of the last near-decade, rural folks are way more likely to have guns.
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I think people also assume that people who live in cities don’t know/help each other. We got a flat tire in the middle of a rainstorm and some guy pulled over, in the middle of the city, to help us change it. We also know some of our neighbors and can call them if needed and tell them if we’re going out of town, etc.
The news would have you believe that I should be fearing for my life anytime I walk out my door in Chicago.
Amusingly, the only time I’ve had my car vandalized or packages stolen was when I was living in small (30-60k) towns in Iowa.
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When I lived in the city, our neighborhood was nice. But, you couldn’t safely walk through some different neighborhoods in the area. And you didn’t wander far from your own yard. Even then, cities have such a population that you’re bound, by statistics, to have a lot of weirdos. My friend and I had a run-in with one such person when were about 8 or 9…I hope the police caught him before he escalated to a more serious crime, because he was sick.
And, yes, out here in the sticks, everyone has guns and big dogs. My neighbor is a police officer, too. It’s a quiet place to live…so little traffic noise or sirens or people noise. The main reason I hate streetlights is the light pollution - even being more than ten miles from the city, I can hardly see any stars in the southern sky and it bothers me. (We try to keep outside lights to a minimum.) I love seeing the stars at night. When it’s clear we put the kids to bed and sneak out to watch for meteorites and satellites, listen to the crickets, frogs, owls and sleepy turkeys, hope no coyotes stroll by.
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Here in the innercity we also still keep our doors unlocked very often, especially the back door. And it’s not like we don’t have any crime at all , but the level is pretty similar to the rural area I lived in. Murder is thankfully rare in both areas, domestic violence and drunk driving happen everywhere. A while back we had a night where half a dozen people’s sheds were emptied. A burglar had simply walked through the back alley at night and had tried every door (luckily we do typically lock that door!). There are more homeless people on the street here but most of the “regulars” in my area have found little jobs to make money and don’t commit crime.
The rural area I’m originally from is still an active farming community, and modern farming equipment is extremely expensive, which means that area is a magnet for highly skilled thieves. Break-ins happen all the time. The thieves have the skills to disable security systems and steal 6 figures worth of equipment without anyone noticing. Very few things are ever found back and the perps are often nowhere to be found, but in many cases it’s clear they have local knowledge. They come back 6 months later when the farmer’s insurance has provided them with new tools and steal those, too. Back when my family had a farm, our Ford 7610 was our most expensive piece of equipment but modern farming tools are way more expensive.
It’s also very lucrative and very common for farmers to rent out some of their outbuildings to criminals that build drugs labs there. Synthetic drugs weren’t a big thing when I was a kid but back then farmers made moonshine. Here in the city people grow pot in basements. I guess drugs are just a fact of life wherever you go.
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