Pickleball Court Lighting Cost Philippines: Lux, Poles, Power Bill

Four poles just outside the sidelines, fixtures aimed across the court, and nothing hanging over the playing lines. That is the basic single-court layout the industry manual draws. Illustrative photo.

Short answer: lighting two open pickleball courts to a recreational 300 lux (30 footcandles) with pole-mounted LED floodlights comes to about ₱328,000 to ₱742,000 for both, or roughly ₱164,000 to ₱371,000 per court, in AEDO's 2026 planning range for fixtures, poles and footings, wiring and a control panel. By the simple lumen method that is six 150 W fixtures per court on four poles, 12 fixtures and 1.8 kW in all. Run 4 hours a night, 5 nights a week, that is about 156 kWh a month, or ₱2,184 at an assumed ₱14.00 per kWh. So the lights are a modest running cost and a much larger build cost, and most of the build cost is poles and footings, not the fixtures. The number that decides whether the court is playable at night is the light level, and the pickleball-specific source we could read, the ASBA and USA Pickleball construction manual, recommends 300, 500 or 750 lux depending on who plays. We found no Philippine code that sets a lux level for a court.

Plug your own case into the calculator below: courts, open or covered, poles or roof mounting, fixture watts, hours and your kWh rate. After it: the light levels and what the Philippines does and does not regulate, how the fixture count is worked out, layout and glare, poles and footings, wiring and permits, timers, what AEDO priced on a real two-court job, and what to send us.

1. How Bright Should a Pickleball Court Be?

The pickleball-specific source we could read is Pickleball Courts: A Construction & Maintenance Manual by the American Sports Builders Association (ASBA) with USA Pickleball. We read Chapter 6 (Lighting) of the 2020 (second) edition. USA Pickleball's manual page lists a 2023 edition (182 pages, published every three years, next one slated for 2026); we could open only its table of contents, whose Lighting chapter has the same headings, and not its lighting tables, so check the current edition before you lock a design. The manual says that pickleball is a fast sport, that players need higher light as they get older, and that, when adding lights, you should "strive to get as much light as you can afford." It sets three categories of average maintained horizontal illumination, measured 3 ft above the court within the primary playing area (PPA):

Three points from the same chapter matter for an owner. "Maintained" means after the light loss factor (LLF): the manual says LLF normally varies between 0.6 and 0.9, so a fixture that reads 300 lux on day one is not what you have in year three unless the plan accounts for it. The PPA in this edition is the court plus 2 ft beyond the sidelines and baselines, 24 × 48 ft for a 20 × 44 ft court. And the manual says facility levels should be chosen "based on the highest skill level" that will play there, with a note that facilities with older players should get more light. Broadcast-quality tournament venues are a different animal, at 125+ fc.

For colour, the manual recommends a CRI between 65 and 80 and a colour temperature of 3800 K to 5000 K, and says sources above 5000 K look bluish and should not be used for court lighting. That rules out the cheapest "daylight 6500 K" floodlights, which is worth writing into any supplier quotation.

2. What the Philippines Does Not Set

We looked for a Philippine number to quote for a court and did not find one. What we could and could not read:

• Pickleball court light levels: we found no Philippine code, DOE guideline or PSME standard that sets a lux level for pickleball. If a supplier says "the Philippine standard is X lux for pickleball", ask for the document.
• Philippine Electrical Code 2017: it governs how the installation is wired and protected. A transcription of PEC 2017 Article 1.3 says lighting plans show the location, type and rating of fixtures "indicating illumination in lux in each room or area", which is a plan-content rule for buildings (Section 1.3.2.1(D)(2), with an exception for residences, hotels, apartment houses and churches), not a court level. We did not have the printed PEC to read every clause, so we cite it only for compliance in general.
• DOE Guidelines on Energy Conserving Design of Buildings: the DOE describes lighting requirements in terms of illumination level, efficacy and lighting power density, but the PDF that would carry its tables did not open for us this month, so we do not quote it or claim it covers or excludes sports courts.
• RA 11285 (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act): we read it on LawPhil. Its energy-manager duties fall on "designated establishments" using 500,000 kWh a year or more, and it points buildings to the DOE guidelines above. The default case in this post uses about 1,900 kWh a year, so we do not treat it as a court-lighting rule.
• USA Pickleball's own rulebook (2026): we searched it and it sets no light level. Lighting appears only in passing: lighting fixtures are listed as an example of a "permanent object" on, above or near the court, and the referee's pre-match check of court conditions includes "lighting" (Rule 17.B.2) without any number.
• Other Philippine standards: we searched for a Philippine National Standard, IESP or PSME document on sports-field illuminance and found none. The Philippine illumination tables that turn up (OSHS workplace tables, and the IRR's 200 and 500 lux for construction and demolition areas) are for workplaces and building sites, not courts.
• EN 12193 and IES RP-6: the European and North American sports-lighting standards are paid documents that we did not read. The values in this post are the ASBA and USA Pickleball manual's, not those standards' text.

So for a Philippine court the sensible basis is the manual's categories, chosen deliberately and written into the specification, with the Philippine Electrical Code and RA 7920 governing the electrical work itself (section 8). The same absence of a national number applies to court dimensions, which we cover in our pickleball court construction cost guide.

3. How Many Lights: The Lumen Method

The calculator uses the classic lumen method. Multiply the target lux by the area to get the light that must land on the court, then divide by how much of a fixture's light really arrives and stays:

Fixtures = (lux × area) ÷ (lumens per fixture × utilisation × light loss factor)

For the default case, 300 lux over the 107 m² primary playing area is about 32,100 lumens on the court. A 150 W fixture at 120 lm/W gives 18,000 lumens. With utilisation 0.40 and LLF 0.80 each fixture puts 5,760 lumens on the court, so 5.6 fixtures, rounded to 6 per court, which checks back at about 323 lux maintained. Our two assumptions carry the answer: utilisation is the share of the fixture's light that lands on the playing area rather than the fence, the neighbour's yard or the sky, and for a floodlight beside a small court it is well under half; and efficacy is on the data sheet, and honest suppliers give it for the whole fixture, not the bare LED chip. Our 120 lm/W is on the optimistic side for cheap retail floodlights: a 150 W IP65 flood listed at Wilcon for ₱5,989 is rated 15,000 lm (100 lm/W) at 6500 K, and at 100 lm/W the default case needs 7 fixtures per court, not 6. It is also a 6500 K light, above the manual's 5000 K ceiling.

Where the method breaks: the simple count says nothing about uniformity (the manual wants the brightest spot no more than 2.0 times the darkest), glare or vertical illuminance (light on the ball, not the floor). Those depend on the fixture's optics and where it sits and is aimed, which is why a real job gets the supplier's computer plot. Use our number to budget and to check a quotation: if a supplier proposes far fewer lumens than the count above, ask to see their calculation.

A cheap sanity check on watts: at 120 lm/W, four 100 W fixtures give 48,000 lumens, about 48% of the 100,000 the default court needs. That's why "four 100 W lights" quoted for a court to 300 lux deserves a follow-up question.

4. Layout, Height, Spacing and Glare

What the manual says, in its own terms:

• Overall playing area. The manual's drawing says the overall playing area may be as little as 30 × 60 ft or as much as 44 × 74 ft. Lighting layout follows that area, not just the court.
• Layouts. For one court, Layout A is four poles with four fixtures, poles outside the overall playing area on the sidelines; Layout B is six poles with six fixtures. For a 30 × 60 ft area, Layout A is listed for all three categories; the 44 × 74 ft area needs Layout B at Category I. Its note on batteries of courts: grouping courts in twos is more efficient for low-mast lighting, and for three or more courts consider medium or high mast.
• Mounting height. "Cut-off" (low-mast) fixtures are generally 22 to 30 ft above the court. For a 30 × 60 ft area the table gives 18 to 22 ft at Category III, 20 to 24 ft at Category II and 22 to 26 ft at Category I. Its notes: higher gives better uniformity and more vertical illumination, and also more spill outside the playing area. High-mast floodlighting is 35 to 60 ft and is for bigger areas.
• Clearances. A minimum of 5 ft from a sideline to a fixed object such as a light pole. Fixtures should not extend over the court lines, though they may extend over the PPA. Poles between adjacent courts should be flanked by fencing, with padding where appropriate. Light poles should not be used as fence posts.

Glare is what players notice first. The manual defines glare as harsh, bright light that can affect a player's ability to follow the ball, and its high-mast drawing marks a "critical glare zone" and says fixtures should be 35 ft or more up to keep glare out of players' eyes. For low-mast layouts that height isn't available, so the answer is the layout above: poles on the sides, fixtures aimed across the court and downward, and shielded optics. The rule of thumb that you should not aim fixtures along the long axis of the court, from a baseline pole straight down the court into the face of a player at the other end, is design practice from lighting suppliers, not a sentence we found in the manual. It also follows from the pole positions the manual draws, all along the sidelines.

Lighting a court to the manual's uniformity ratio of 2.0 also depends on the colour of the floor and the walls: a dark court and dark windscreens give the white ball more contrast, as the manual notes, and, in our experience and not from the manual, a glossy floor finish can reflect the fixtures back into players' eyes. Raise it when you choose the floor finish; our court construction guide covers surfaces.

5. Poles or Roof Mounting

Open court: there is nothing to hang fixtures from, so it is poles. That is the case where the pole and footing cost dominates the lighting budget, and the default case above shows why: about 8 poles and footings are the largest line.

Covered court: you can mount fixtures on the roof structure, on brackets from purlins, truss chords or roof columns, and skip the poles. It is cheaper if the roof was designed for it. Three conditions:

• Height. For indoor courts the manual says USAP and ASBA recommend fixtures 30 ft above the court, with a minimum of 20 ft, and again that fixtures should not extend over the lines. A low roof on a barangay-style court can leave the fixtures at 15 ft, close to players' eyes on a lob. Our calculator flags roof heights under 6.1 m (20 ft).
• Structure. The fixtures and brackets are light, but they load the purlin and the connection, and in a typhoon the roof frame sees wind uplift through them. Tell the structural designer where the fixtures go before the roof is designed, not after. Our covered court guide and covered pickleball roof structure post explain why wind governs these roofs, and rooftop solar mounting shows the same attachment issue.
• Very high roofs. If the roof is 10 m or more above the floor, the throw is long, more light spills and you need more lumens per court. The calculator warns when that happens; ask for a supplier plot.

Pole mounting on a covered court is also possible if columns or roof heights are wrong for fixtures; it costs more but gives better control of aim. Clear-height planning for large roofed spaces is covered in our clear height guide, and roof framing options in pre-engineered steel buildings and concrete vs steel frame.

6. Poles, Footings and Wind

A light pole is a cantilever: a tall thin column fixed only at the ground, with the fixture and its bracket catching wind at the top. Wind on the pole and fixture creates an overturning moment at the base (the wind force multiplied by its height above the base), so the footing does the real work. Taller pole, larger fixture area, higher wind speed or softer soil all make the footing bigger. The manual says only "check with local codes regarding necessary wind loads for the light poles."

• Wind speed is a site value under NSCP 2015 Section 207, read from the wind map for the location. Our NSCP wind load guide explains the method and the wind load lookup gives the value for your site. We don't quote a wind speed or footing size here because both are per-site.
• Base type. The manual describes anchor-bolt base-plate poles and direct-burial poles set in a concrete footing. Direct burial can be cheaper; base-plate poles are easier to straighten, can be replaced without replacing the foundation, and let you build the footings before the poles arrive.
• Footing. A reinforced concrete pier or pad sized from the pole supplier's base reaction and the soil, with anchor bolts set from the supplier's template. On a filled court pad, place the footing on natural ground or well-compacted fill; our structural design package post covers who checks that.
• Steel or concrete poles. The manual says steel is the most common. As general practice, not a manual or code statement, hot-dip galvanised steel holds up better in coastal air than bare painted steel; ask for the galvanising specification.
• Typhoon days. A pole that can fall on a court is a safety issue for players and neighbours. The pole and its footing should be checked for the site wind speed, not assumed.

7. Load and the Monthly Electricity Bill

Load in kW is simply fixtures times watts. The default case: 12 fixtures × 150 W = 1.8 kW. At an assumed power factor of 0.90 that is 2.0 kVA, about 8.7 A at 230 V, or about 10.9 A with a 125% allowance for continuous loads. That allowance is standard design practice and our service sizing guide uses it; a transcription of PEC 2017 Article 2.10 states the 125% rule for continuous loads on branch circuits, but we did not read the printed code, so confirm the clause with your electrical engineer. The 230 V single-phase supply and 0.90 power factor are our assumptions. That is small: in most cases court lights are a minor addition to an existing service, not a new transformer. It matters more if you are also adding a clubhouse, air conditioning or a pump.

The bill is kW × hours × days × ₱ per kWh. We take the rate from what Negros Oriental cooperatives publish, and label it an assumption:

Rates change every month with the generation charge: NORECO II's residential figure moved by about ₱0.73 per kWh in the last month alone. Your bill also depends on your customer class and which cooperative or utility serves the site, so check a recent bill and put your own rate into the calculator. Default case: 1.8 kW × 4 h × 5 nights × 52 ÷ 12 = 156 kWh a month, at ₱14.00 = ₱2,184 a month, about ₱26,000 a year. Double the hours or the courts and the bill doubles. Lighting one court for a family is a small cost; lighting six courts for 6 hours every night is a real line in a club's budget: 6 courts × 6 fixtures × 150 W = 5.4 kW, and 5.4 kW × 6 h × 30 days is about 972 kWh, roughly ₱13,600 a month at ₱14.

8. Wiring, Breaker, Panel, Permit

• Wiring route. The manual recommends all wiring underground, outside the court area, to comply with the applicable electrical code (it is a US manual and names the US code; here that means the Philippine Electrical Code), with each court or bank of courts operable individually, and a duplex outlet at the base of poles for maintenance and equipment. In our case that means conduit trenches to each pole, pull boxes, and a wire size checked for voltage drop over the run, which is where a long run to a far court goes wrong.
• Breaker and panel. A dedicated circuit per court group with its own breaker, a contactor for switching, and earthing at every pole. The size comes from the load schedule, not a rule of thumb; our service sizing guide explains why. We don't quote conductor sizes here.
• Who signs. Section 34 of RA 7920 says no electrical installation is to be undertaken unless the plans, designs, valuations and specifications "have been prepared by or under the responsible charge of, and signed and sealed by a professional electrical engineer," a construction permit is first secured, and the work is done under the Philippine Electrical Code and supervised by a professional electrical engineer, a registered electrical engineer or a registered master electrician, as the case may be. We found no later act changing Section 34; confirm the current text with PRC.
• Permit fee. The schedule of fees in the 2005 Revised Edition of the IRR of PD 1096, item 4 (Electrical Fees), prices electrical permits for residential, institutional, commercial and industrial structures by total connected load in the load schedule: ₱200 for 5 kVA or less, and ₱200 plus ₱20 per kVA for over 5 up to 50 kVA. Two courts' lighting alone, at about 2 kVA, is in the first band, but the fee counts the whole connected load on the plan, so a clubhouse or pump changes it. The Building Official computes the actual fee, and an LGU may apply its own schedule.
• Does the court need a building permit? The IRR does not name pickleball. Rule VII, Section 701 does name "tennis, badminton or basketball courts" under Group J, Division 3 (accessory), and lists "tennis courts, basketball courts" run by membership organisations not primarily for gain under Group A, Division 1; it adds that any use not named goes in "the Group which it most nearly resembles". So the classification is the Building Official's call, and it varies by LGU and by whether there is a roof, walls or a clubhouse. Ask your Building Official first; our plans returned guide and commercial permit guide show what OBOs ask for.
• After energising. Get it inspected and keep the records; our electrical safety inspection guide covers the annual inspection.

9. Timers and Sensors

Controls are design practice, not a code requirement we could cite. What works on courts:

• Timer plus photocell through a contactor: the lights come on at dusk and the timer cuts them at closing time. It stops the "left on till morning" bill that costs more than any fixture.
• Separate switching per court, as the manual recommends, so one court can be lit while others sit empty.
• Coin or card timers for club courts, so players pay for the light they use, which needs a contactor rated for the load.
• Avoid motion sensors on the court itself. A rally in a quiet corner can leave a player in the dark mid-point; sensors suit paths and car parks, not the playing area.
• Instant-on and dimming. The manual notes LED lighting offers instant-on and can be dimmed, so a "practice" setting at reduced power is possible if the driver supports it.

10. What It Costs: AEDO 2026 Planning Ranges

These are AEDO 2026 planning ranges for Philippine work, kept in line with the calculator, not market facts and not quotations. They exclude VAT, design, permits, the utility service and meter, and the court pad itself. We did not port any US price; the manual and the US suppliers we read do not give Philippine costs.

What we could and could not check against the market. For fixtures we spot-checked Philippine retail listings read on September 24, 2026: 150 W IP65 LED floodlights at ₱5,989 (Wilcon, 15,000 lm, 6500 K) and ₱5,999.75 (Lightforce Corporation), and a 150 W "Ironman" model at ₱8,649.75 (Lightforce). The ₱45 per watt low end (₱6,750 for 150 W) sits just above those generic listings because a sports fixture with shielding and a suitable colour temperature costs more than a generic flood. We found no published peso prices for 6 to 8 m sports light poles, anchor-bolt footings or court wiring, so the pole, footing, wiring and panel lines are AEDO's own planning judgement, not market quotes; get supplier quotations before budgeting.

Add them up for two open courts at 300 lux and you get the default answer: fixtures ₱81,000 to ₱162,000, poles and footings ₱168,000 to ₱400,000, wiring ₱60,000 to ₱140,000, panel ₱19,000 to ₱40,000, ₱328,000 to ₱742,000 in all. The same two courts covered, with roof-mounted fixtures at 7 m, drop the poles for brackets and come out at about ₱142,000 to ₱315,000 (5 fixtures per court, because roof-mounted light is assumed to be used better), because the roof is doing the work; ask your roof designer to price the roof and the lighting together. The court pad, footings for a roof, flooring and paint are in our court construction cost guide, and the whole-project view in construction cost per square metre 2026.

Design of the lighting and electrical is a separate fee. AEDO's engineering fee guide covers how our fees work, and lighting and electrical design is quoted per project under MEPFS.

11. A Real Two-Court Job: What the Proposal Says

AEDO's proposal for a two-court open pickleball court in Manjuyod, Negros Oriental (court pad of 352.63 sqm) is a fixed-price proposal (Rev 2) for footings, pedestals, backfill, slab, polishing and paint, plus lighting. The lighting line reads: "Supply and installation of court lighting, ten (10) sets of 100-watt anti-glare LED floodlights, including light fixtures, mounting hardware, and electrical wiring up to the court's lighting points." Three things to take from it:

• Ten fixtures at 100 W is 1 kW for two courts, five per court. Our calculator's answer for the same 300 lux at 150 W is six per court. As arithmetic on our stated assumptions (120 lm/W, LLF 0.80, 107 m²), five 100 W fixtures give 60,000 lumens per court, which is about 180 lux maintained at utilisation 0.40 (poles) or about 225 lux at 0.50 (well-placed roof mounting). That is a different design level from the manual's 300 lux, so the level to design for should be written into the specification, with the supplier's plot to confirm it.
• The lump sum mixes items. The line item is "Court Lighting (Supply & Installation, 10 sets @ 100W anti-glare LED floodlight), Mobilization/Demobilization, Contingencies & OCM" at ₱136,038. It is one figure for lighting plus mobilisation, contingencies and overhead and profit, so it is not the price of the lighting and we do not read it as one.
• Poles were not in the job. The proposal excludes "lighting posts/poles and their supporting structure", saying the fixtures shall be mounted on the owner-provided roof structure or columns, and excludes electrical supply and metering beyond the court's lighting points, and permits. That is exactly why poles and footings appear as their own line in our planning ranges: on a bare court they can be the largest lighting cost.

We use this only to show what is and is not in a real lump sum. Our planning ranges above are not derived from it.

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