If you turn on outside lights at night, do you turn them off when you go to bed?

There are no street lights on my little lane, and the landlord installed lights on the buildings he owns that stay on all night, which I like.

I leave them on all night for safety reasons ever since we had our catalytic converter stolen from right in front of our house. I’m hoping the light will deter thieves.

I have dusk to dawn lights outside, so they take care of themselves.

It’s fine leaving them on as long as you’re not like Justin

I leave them on, but my son will often turn them off sometime in the early hours.

A private detective told me I should turn off the back lights at night if I’m worried about intruders, because “why do you want to help the bad guys see where they’re going?”

I’m still not sure of the logic on either side.

@Jeruba motion sensitive lights and cameras help. Even better if they are hooked to your phone.

I shut them off when I’m in the house. Nobody comes here and if anybody were going to visit, I’d have a heads up and then I’d turn the lights on.

I leave lights on outside and one lamp inside on during the dark hours.

Light out at night.

Unless there are silly automatic lights involved. I try to shut those down too.

In my current house there is one lightpost in front of every house that automatically comes on dusk to dawn (that the homeowner pays for the electricity without a choice to turn it off). Aside from that, I rarely put my outside lights on.

In previous houses I almost never put on outside lights. To me it’s a signal no one is home if your outside lights are on. It also is a waste of electricity. No one is popping over for a visit unannounced at night.

In TN I had outside motion detector lights, I’ve thought about getting them for my house now, I think that’s a good idea. The TN house was in the woods, my current house is on a street with houses ten feet apart, the lamposts I spoke of in front of every house, and additional street lights.

I turn them off. Unless I have renters, then I leave them on. The motion controlled ones are there if needed.

Thanks all. I have a motion sensor light by the front steps but have recently started putting the regular porch light on since a neighbor mentioned how dark the neighborhood is since we have fewer year round residents. Since I usually don’t come downstairs very early, it seems wasteful to leave them on all night.

Off at night.

The outside lights at the front of my house are automated: on at dusk, off around bedtime. They even try to adjust for changing sunset times through the seasons. Seems their equation is off, though.

Front on dusk to dawn, some on motion settings. Security cameras need light or you have no evidence.

Off at bedtime.

It depends on where I’m living.
In “tha city,” I would keep my back porch light on 24/7. I had my back door fitted with bolt and slide locks, but the light seemed to make sense. It wasn’t a terrible neighborhood at my last place, but there was a lot of foot traffic, so I tried to make the little house not an obvious target if I wasn’t home.

I currently live out in the swamp. There are a few streetlights, and most yards have motion detection lights/cameras. For better or worse, their are dogs everywhere.
We leave the outside lights all off. In “tha country,” lights attract critters. A LOT of people don’t understand that there can be a correlation in having a lot of unwanted insects and keeping your lights on at night. It’s a big variable.

@Jeruba I disagree, with the detective…Please use your backyard lights. You may see your detective!

We leave our porch light on 24/7.

I have dusk-dawn, motion-detector lights.

They automatically turn on at dusk and turn off about 6 hrs later.

They stay in MD mode until dawn, at which time they’ll stay off regardless of whether there’s any detectable motion.

They run on a timer.