Bringing Professional Sports Lighting to the School Campus

What happens when professional sports lighting standards are brought into a school sports facility?

For students, the difference can be seen in clearer visibility, more comfortable training and a safer environment for everyday sports activities.

As schools place greater emphasis on sports facilities and student wellness, campus sports lighting is becoming an increasingly important part of modern school infrastructure.

The Yuxi Road School (Xinghai Campus of Hefei No. 38 Middle School) in Hefei, China, recently underwent a major redevelopment project, including new indoor and outdoor sports facilities.

SCL Sports Lighting provided professional LED sports lighting solutions for the school's indoor sports hall and outdoor athletics and football field, creating a lighting environment designed for competition, training and daily activities.

01 | Project Overview & Lighting Objectives

Founded in 1958, Yuxi Road School (Xinghai Campus of Hefei No. 38 Middle School) is part of a major redevelopment project in the eastern new district of Hefei.

The approximately 64.36-mu site includes around 40,000 square meters of total floor area and is planned to accommodate 42 classes.

The development includes:

• Teaching buildings
• Laboratory facilities
• Dining facilities
• Student accommodation
• Indoor sports facilities
• Auditorium
• Supporting infrastructure

The sports facilities cover both indoor and outdoor areas, with multiple usage scenarios.

The lighting system therefore needed to support:

• Sports competitions
• Physical education
• Student training
• Recreational activities
• Evening sports and cultural activities

The overall lighting design followed relevant Chinese sports venue lighting requirements, with the goal of creating a safe, comfortable and professional visual environment for students and teachers.

02 | Indoor Sports Hall: Uniform Lighting for Multi-Sport Use

The indoor sports hall is designed as a multi-purpose sports space for handball and basketball.

For students who train and compete in the hall every day, visual conditions directly affect both performance and safety.

The project therefore adopted a professional sports lighting solution designed to provide competition-level lighting performance.

Star-Pattern Fixture Layout

The luminaires were arranged in a distributed grid layout, providing balanced coverage across the entire playing area.

This approach helps reduce significant differences between bright and dark areas and creates a more consistent visual environment.

Precision Optical Distribution

Professional secondary optical design was used to direct light accurately toward the playing area while controlling glare.

This is particularly important for sports such as basketball and handball, where players frequently look upward while:

• Passing
• Shooting
• Tracking the ball
• Jumping
• Defending

With a stable and comfortable lighting environment, students can follow the ball more clearly and concentrate on the game without unnecessary visual distractions.

Whether it is a fast handball counterattack or a high basketball shot, consistent and well-distributed lighting provides a stronger visual foundation for training and competition.

03 | Outdoor Sports Field: One Lighting System for Football and Athletics

The outdoor sports area includes a 400-meter running track and an 11-a-side football field measuring approximately 105 × 70 meters.

The facility is intended for amateur competitions and professional training.

Because the field supports multiple sports, the lighting system needed to provide effective coverage for both the football pitch and the running track.

Four-Corner Lighting Layout

The project uses a four-corner lighting arrangement, with lighting poles positioned around the four corners outside the running track.

This configuration provides comprehensive illumination across the football field while also supporting lighting requirements for the surrounding track.

The result is a multi-purpose lighting system that supports:

• Football training and competition
• Running and sprint training
• Evening physical education
• After-school sports activities

Precision Optics and Light Spill Control

Through photometric calculations and optical distribution optimization, light is focused toward the sports areas instead of being unnecessarily directed outside the venue.

This helps create a comfortable visual environment for students while reducing unwanted light spill into the surrounding campus and residential areas.

For school sports facilities, this balance is particularly important.

The goal is not simply to make the field brighter, but to provide the right light where it is needed.

04 | Project Value: Bringing Professional Standards to School Sports

1. Supporting Safer and More Professional Campus Sports

Sports lighting in schools is sometimes treated as a basic infrastructure requirement.

However, lighting quality can have a direct impact on the visual experience and safety of students.

Excessive glare may interfere with the ability to track a ball or identify the position of teammates, while uneven illumination can contribute to visual fatigue and difficulty judging distances.

For the Yuxi Road School project, professional competition-level requirements were applied to the indoor sports hall, while the outdoor field received carefully optimized lighting based on its multi-purpose training and competition needs.

This represents an important principle:

Professional sports lighting standards should not be limited to professional stadiums. They can also improve the quality and safety of school sports environments.

When every lighting position and optical distribution is considered according to the requirements of the sport, students can enjoy a more reliable environment for training, competition and everyday exercise.

05 | Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Sports Lighting

As public institutions increasingly focus on energy efficiency and sustainable facility management, sports lighting is also moving toward more efficient technologies.

Compared with traditional sports lighting technologies, LED sports lighting systems can significantly reduce energy consumption depending on the existing system and operating conditions.

SCL's intelligent lighting approach can also support dynamic lighting control based on different usage scenarios.

For example:

• Training can use an appropriate lower lighting level
• Competition can activate the required lighting level
• Different areas can be controlled according to actual use
• Lighting can be adjusted according to operational requirements

In comparable lighting upgrade projects, SCL reports annual energy savings of up to 40%, together with reductions in nighttime light pollution.

For schools and other public facilities, these improvements can help reduce long-term operating costs.

Energy consumption and maintenance are two important ongoing costs for sports facilities, making LED sports lighting an opportunity to improve both energy efficiency and operational reliability.

06 | From Sports Lights to Intelligent Lighting Systems

Sports lighting is evolving from a collection of individual fixtures into a more integrated lighting system.

Modern LED technology allows lighting systems to incorporate intelligent controls and connected technologies, creating more flexible ways to manage sports facilities.

Instead of operating every fixture at the same level throughout the day, intelligent lighting can support different scenarios according to actual usage.

For a school sports facility, this can include:

Training Mode
Lighting optimized for daily physical education and sports training.

Competition Mode
Higher lighting performance for competitions and important events.

Daily Activity Mode
Appropriate lighting for recreational activities and after-school use.

Maintenance Mode
Simplified lighting operation for facility maintenance and management.

This type of flexible control can help facilities balance lighting performance, energy efficiency and operational convenience.

The Yuxi Road School project demonstrates how these concepts can be applied not only to major sports venues, but also to modern educational facilities.

07 | Why Professional Sports Lighting Design Matters

A school sports facility may not host an international tournament, but the lighting requirements are still very different from those of an ordinary outdoor space.

A professional sports lighting system needs to consider:

• Court or field dimensions
• Mounting height
• Fixture positions
• Beam angles
• Illuminance
• Uniformity
• Glare
• Light spill
• Different sports
• Different operating scenarios

This is why simply selecting a high-power floodlight is rarely enough.

The lighting design should come first. The fixture selection should follow the design.

Through professional photometric calculations and optical distribution design, manufacturers can determine the appropriate fixture quantity, beam angles and aiming positions for each project.

This approach helps reduce unnecessary light output while improving the actual lighting performance on the playing area.

08 | SCL Sports Lighting for Modern Sports Facilities

With nearly two decades of experience in the professional LED sports lighting industry, SCL Sports Lighting provides customized lighting solutions for sports venues, schools, training facilities and multi-purpose sports complexes.

For the Yuxi Road School project, SCL Sports Lighting provided lighting solutions for both the indoor sports hall and outdoor sports field.

The project demonstrates our approach to school sports lighting:

Indoor professional sports lighting + outdoor multi-purpose field lighting + precision optics + intelligent control.

Rather than applying the same lighting configuration to every venue, the solution is developed according to the actual application, facility layout and sports requirements.

This approach helps create sports lighting environments that are:

• More uniform
• More comfortable
• Better controlled
• More energy efficient
• Suitable for multiple sports applications

Conclusion: Better Lighting Creates Better Sports Environments

The Yuxi Road School project demonstrates that professional sports lighting has a role far beyond professional stadiums.

From an indoor basketball and handball hall to an outdoor football field and running track, the right lighting design can improve the visual environment for students while supporting training, competition and everyday physical activity.

For schools, the goal is not simply to install brighter lights.

It is to create a lighting environment that is safe, comfortable, efficient and designed around the way people actually use the sports facility.

At SCL Sports Lighting, we believe every sports venue deserves lighting designed around the game—not simply around the fixture.

SCL Sports Lighting — Professional LED Lighting for Better Sports Environments.