Global Outdoor Lighting Market Outlook, 2031

The global outdoor lighting market is a public-infrastructure replacement market in which the regulatory clock is now the primary determinant of volume, and the instruments driving it operate on the lamp, the luminaire, and the installation separately. The European Union’s Mercury Regulation (EU) 2024/1849 closed the manufacturing and export route for mercury-containing lamps, with remaining high-pressure sodium wattages exceeding mercury thresholds and linear halophosphate fluorescent lamps passing their manufacturing and export deadline on 31 December 2025, following the earlier February 2023 ban on 250W and 400W HPS/SON-T variants exceeding mercury content limits. The practical consequence for municipalities is that the amber sodium glow still visible on millions of European streets can no longer be legally replaced with equivalent technology, and spare parts become scarce and emergency replacements expensive. China has moved on the luminaire rather than the lamp. GB 37478-2025, published on 30 May 2025 and effective 1 June 2026, sets minimum allowable energy efficiency values and efficiency grades for LED luminaires used in road and tunnel lighting, and the standard is projected to deliver 162 TWh of cumulative electricity savings and over 90 million tonnes of CO2 reduction by 2030, while shifting Grade 1 efficiency products from 5 percent of the market in 2019 to more than 60 percent in 2025. Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism revised the Road Lighting Facility Installation Standard in October 2025 to make LED the standard light source, replacing the prior technology-neutral framing, and added commentary on low-position lighting and dimming as LED penetration expands.

The specification and delivery layer is where these mandates translate into procurement models, and the models themselves are shifting. India’s Energy Efficiency Services Limited has installed over 13.1 million LED streetlights across urban and rural areas, delivering an estimated annual saving of approximately 8.8 billion kWh and a reduction in peak demand, and the programme operates through performance contracting rather than upfront capital purchase. The contract expiry cycle is now generating a second-generation market: EESL’s seven-year agreement in Telangana’s Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation expired in 2025, and the state has floated tenders for a 10-year arrangement estimated at Rs 1,341.60 crore across three municipal corporations, with the central institutional question being whether private operators will be required to deploy the Individual Lighting Monitoring System that EESL proposed. Delhi’s PWD is exploring an EMI-based model in which the private company installing the lights receives monthly payments only after the lights are fully operational, replacing a traditional model where advance payments led to delays and limited accountability. Bengaluru North City Corporation has completed 86 percent of its LED conversion under a public-private partnership model, with 68,907 LED streetlights installed including those on 14,576 vacant poles, and centralized control and monitoring system switches in progress.

The European framework requires compliance with EN 13201 for road lighting performance, EN 12464-2 for outdoor work places, and CEN/TR 13201-1 for lighting class selection, alongside the Ecodesign and RoHS instruments that determine which light sources remain legal. The UK applies BS 5489-1:2020 with its four environmental zones from E1 to E4, and lighting class selection must follow the risk-assessment requirements in the standard with a minimum three-year accident history where lighting is to be justified on safety grounds. The North American framework rests on ANSI/IES RP-8-25, the 2025 update of which emphasises the luminance design method as the primary approach alongside new guidance on LED lighting, adaptive lighting, and lighting for pedestrians. Australia applies AS/NZS 1158 for roads and public spaces alongside AS/NZS 60598.1:2025 and the luminaire standard for road and street lighting, and council specifications require LED luminaires and smart control systems as a condition of acceptance. Saudi Arabia applies SASO 2927 for street lighting luminaires, which follows IEC 60598-2-3 with national deviations including 230/400 V supply, and the 2026 amendment deleted the clause requiring colour temperature between 3000 K and 6000 K, which removes a constraint that had previously excluded warmer-spectrum products from Saudi street lighting procurement.

Market Dynamics Driver: Mercury phase-outs and efficacy-grade mandates forcing dated luminaire replacement
The statutory removal of mercury-containing lamps and the introduction of binding luminaire efficiency grades have converted outdoor lighting from a condition-based replacement category into a dated procurement pool. The EU’s December 2025 deadline for remaining HPS wattages and halophosphate fluorescents means that a municipality still operating sodium cannot legally procure equivalent replacements, and the December 2026 deadline for linear fluorescent lamps completes the removal of the discharge sources that dominated European street lighting. China’s GB 37478-2025, effective 1 June 2026, sets minimum allowable efficiency values for road and tunnel LED luminaires and grades products by efficiency class, and the projected 162 TWh cumulative saving by 2030 indicates the scale at which the standard is intended to operate. Japan’s October 2025 revision makes LED the standard source rather than an alternative, which removes the technology-neutral procurement pathway that had allowed non-LED specification to persist.

Challenge: Monitoring-system underutilisation and service-contract transition risk
The principal constraint on outdoor lighting market conversion is not luminaire supply but the institutional capability to operate the monitoring and service models that the replacement programmes require. The UK National Highways CMS contract explicitly records that the central management system is not being utilised to its full potential and requires optimisation to deliver the intended benefits of dimming, remote monitoring, and reduced roadside visits. In Telangana, the EESL contract expired in 2025 and the state’s proposed 10-year replacement contract does not establish whether private agencies will be required to deploy the Individual Lighting Monitoring System, leaving the central institutional question unresolved. The transition from an installation contract to a service-management contract requires asset records, fault reporting, maintenance schedules, and a method for verifying whether lights remain operational, and a system covering 17.24 lakh LED streetlights across Telangana cannot be treated as a simple procurement exercise.



Trend: Dark-sky CCT caps and full-cutoff shielding moving from voluntary guidance to procurement condition
Light-pollution control has migrated from advisory guidance into enforceable ordinance requirements, and the shift is reshaping the spectral and optical specification of outdoor luminaires. The DarkSky standard of ≤3000 K correlated colour temperature is now embedded in municipal ordinances, with Brisbane’s Dark Sky Ordinance requiring fully shielded fixtures at 3000 K or less and a March 2025 replacement deadline for non-compliant bulbs, Petoskey’s ordinance aligning with the ≤3000 K standard with 2700 K preferred near natural areas, and Provo, Utah adopting fully shielded, downward-directed fixtures at 3000 K or lower for all new installations. Some ordinances go further, requiring all lighting to use a colour temperature not exceeding 3000 K with a preference for 2700 K where possible, and full cutoff shielding such that no light is emitted above a horizontal plane through the fixture. The trend interacts with the standards framework because ANSI/IES RP-8-25 adds new guidance on LED lighting and adaptive lighting, and the DesignLights Consortium notes that continuous dimming to ≤20 percent of maximum output power is required to minimise light pollution alongside the 3000 K cap.

Segmentation Analysis By Product Type
• Street lights constitute the largest and most heavily regulated product category because they are the object of the EU mercury phase-out, China’s GB 37478-2025 efficacy grades, Japan’s LED standardisation, and the municipal performance-contracting models that now govern delivery, and the UK’s 70 percent LED target by March 2027 is explicitly a street-lighting inventory target.
• Floodlights serve area, sports, and industrial illumination and operate under a separate certification stack that includes IEC 60598-2-5 for floodlight safety, EN 12193 for sports lighting classes, and FAA obstruction lighting where masts penetrate airspace, which means that a street-light-compliant luminaire cannot be substituted into a floodlight application without additional qualification.
• High-mast lights address large-area illumination from elevated structures and intersect with aviation marking requirements where the mast height triggers obstruction lighting obligations.
• Bollard lights serve pedestrian and landscape wayfinding at low mounting heights and are governed by the same safety standards as other fixed outdoor luminaires, with ingress protection and impact resistance determining service life in public realm applications.
• Wall-mounted lights and landscape lights operate at the architectural specification layer, where dark-sky CCT caps and full-cutoff shielding requirements are most directly applied because these fixtures are often installed near residential boundaries and natural areas.
• Other outdoor fixtures, including solar-powered standalone products, are governed by the off-grid quality framework in IEC TS 62257-9-8:2025, which provides baseline requirements for quality, durability, and truth in advertising for stand-alone renewable energy products with peak power ratings of 350 W or less.

By Lighting Technology
• LED has become the default technology in outdoor lighting because the regulatory instruments in every major market now either exclude non-LED sources or make LED the standard specification, with Japan’s October 2025 revision making LED the standard light source , China’s GB 37478-2025 grading LED luminaires for road and tunnel lighting , and the EU’s mercury phase-out removing HPS and fluorescent sources from the legal replacement pathway.
• HID lighting, primarily high-pressure sodium and metal halide, remains in the installed base but has no forward procurement pathway in regulated markets because the EU has removed the dominant wattages and China’s efficacy grades are written around LED performance.
• Fluorescent lighting in outdoor applications is confined to legacy installations and is being removed by the same EU mercury instruments that cover linear fluorescent lamps.
• Other technologies occupy a residual niche in heritage and specialty applications, and the technology question in outdoor lighting has effectively resolved to which LED platform and which control architecture rather than which light source.

By Power Source
• Grid-powered outdoor lighting remains the dominant architecture because the street-lighting networks that the regulatory instruments target are grid-connected series or parallel circuits, and the performance-contracting models that now govern delivery are built around grid-supplied energy savings and utility bill reductions.
• Solar-powered outdoor lighting is expanding in off-grid and rural applications, supported by World Bank-funded programmes including Cameroon’s Local Governance and Resilient Communities Project for solar street lamps in Akwaya Council, Liberia’s Urban Resilience Project for solar streetlights in Monrovia, and Kenya’s Informal Settlements Improvement Project for solar-powered street lights in Lamu, and these products are governed by IEC TS 62257-9-8:2025 and its companion laboratory evaluation standard IEC TS 62257-9-5:2024 for quality, durability, and truth in advertising.
• Battery-powered outdoor lighting serves portable and temporary applications, and the power-source choice determines which quality framework applies: a grid-connected luminaire is certified under IEC 60598 and the applicable efficacy standard, while a solar product with peak power at or below 350 W and system voltage at or below 35 V falls within the IEC TS 62257 framework.

By Application
• Roadways and highways represent the largest application segment because they are the object of the EU mercury phase-out, China’s GB 37478-2025, Japan’s road lighting standard, the UK’s National Highways LED target, and India’s EESL and municipal performance contracts, and the standards that govern them include EN 13201, BS 5489-1:2020, ANSI/IES RP-8-25, and AS/NZS 1158.
• Public spaces, including parks, squares, and pedestrian areas, are shaped by dark-sky ordinances that cap CCT and require full-cutoff shielding, and the DesignLights Consortium’s requirement for continuous dimming to ≤20 percent of maximum output applies to these installations alongside the 3000 K cap.
• Commercial premises use outdoor lighting for parking, façade, and perimeter illumination, and the specification is influenced by the same safety standards as public lighting but without the public-procurement and performance-contracting dimensions.
• Residential outdoor areas use wall-mounted and landscape fixtures where ADA compliance rules constrain protrusion, with fixtures hung between 27 and 80 inches above the floor required to have an extension of 4 inches or less in walkways and corridors.
• Industrial facilities use floodlights and high-mast lights for yard, loading, and process-area illumination, and the luminaire must satisfy the industrial environmental requirements in addition to the general outdoor safety standards.

By End-user
• Government and municipalities constitute the largest end-user segment because street lighting is a municipal asset, and the procurement models are shifting from direct purchase to performance contracts and public-private partnerships, with Telangana’s proposed 10-year, Rs 1,341.60 crore arrangement across three municipal corporations and Bengaluru’s PPP-model conversion being representative of the direction.
• Commercial end-users purchase outdoor lighting for parking, retail, hospitality, and office campuses, and the specification is shaped by the same standards that govern public lighting but with the commercial buyer making a direct capital decision rather than a service-contract decision.
• Residential end-users consume outdoor lighting through landscape, security, and façade fixtures, and the segment is most directly affected by dark-sky ordinances because residential installations are often near natural areas and the CCT caps are written with those boundaries in mind.
• Industrial end-users require outdoor lighting that integrates with site safety systems and environmental permits, and the floodlight and high-mast products used in industrial yards carry the additional certification burden of the industrial environment alongside the general outdoor lighting standards.

Regional Analysis • Europe operates under the EU Mercury Regulation 2024/1849 and the Ecodesign and RoHS framework, with remaining HPS wattages and halophosphate fluorescents passing their manufacturing and export deadline on 31 December 2025 and linear fluorescent lamps following at the end of 2026, alongside EN 13201 for road lighting performance and CEN/TR 13201-1 for lighting class selection. The UK applies BS 5489-1:2020 with its four environmental zones from E1 to E4 and risk-assessment-based lighting class selection, and National Highways has set a 70 percent LED conversion target for 31 March 2027 with a Central Management System contract awarded in December 2025 to optimise dimming and fault monitoring.
• China’s GB 37478-2025 sets minimum allowable efficiency values and grades for road and tunnel LED luminaires, effective 1 June 2026, and the standard is projected to deliver 162 TWh of cumulative electricity savings and over 90 million tonnes of CO2 reduction by 2030, with Grade 1 products rising from 5 percent of the market in 2019 to more than 60 percent in 2025.
• Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism revised the Road Lighting Facility Installation Standard in October 2025 to make LED the standard light source and added guidance on low-position lighting and dimming.
• India’s street-lighting market is shaped by EESL’s 13.1 million installed LED streetlights and 8.8 billion kWh annual saving, by the transition from expiring EESL contracts to 10-year PPP arrangements in Telangana and EMI-based models in Delhi, and by the draft second revision of IS 1944 consolidating Parts 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 into a single road and tunnel lighting code.
• North America operates under ANSI/IES RP-8-25, which emphasises luminance design alongside new guidance on LED lighting, adaptive lighting, and pedestrian lighting, and under municipal dark-sky ordinances that cap CCT at 3000 K or lower and require full-cutoff shielding.
• Australia applies AS/NZS 1158 for roads and public spaces, AS/NZS 60598.1:2025 for luminaires, and council specifications that require LED luminaires and smart control systems as a condition of acceptance.
• Saudi Arabia applies SASO 2927 for street lighting luminaires, which follows IEC 60598-2-3 with national deviations and whose 2026 amendment deleted the 3000–6000 K colour-temperature clause, alongside SASO 2870 for LED lamp efficacy.
• Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South America are shaped by World Bank-funded solar street lighting programmes, including Cameroon’s PROLOG project, Liberia’s LURP, and Kenya’s KISIP II, with products governed by IEC TS 62257-9-8:2025 for quality, durability, and truth in advertising for off-grid products at or below 350 W.

Considered in this report
• Historic Year: 2020
• Base year: 2025
• Estimated year: 2026
• Forecast year: 2031

Aspects covered in this report
• Global Outdoor Lighting Market with its value and forecast along with its segments
• Various drivers and challenges
• On-going trends and developments
• Top profiled companies
• Strategic recommendation

By Product Type
• Street Lights
• Floodlights
• High-Mast Lights
• Bollard Lights
• Wall-Mounted Lights
• Landscape Lights
• Other Outdoor Fixtures

By Lighting Technology
• LED
• HID
• Fluorescent
• Other Technologies

By Power Source
• Grid-Powered
• Solar-Powered
• Battery-Powered

By Application
• Roadways & Highways
• Public Spaces
• Commercial Premises
• Residential Outdoor Areas
• Industrial Facilities

By End-user
• Government & Municipalities
• Commercial
• Residential
• Industrial