Light and Los Angeles are intrinsically linked.
It is a light that evokes emotion and demands a response. film producer David Lynch said The “silent golden sunshine” of LA was the reason filmmakers flocked here. In The New Yorker, writer Lawrence Weschler described the soft glow in the air here, day and night. During OJ Simpson’s infamous car chase televised across the country, Weschler to cry Seeing the afternoon sun parting from the mist.
For decades, L.A.’s hazy blue days and golden pink twilight have given way to golden orange-speckled nights, where amber streetlights shine like stars in the sky across the hills, valleys and coastal plains.
But now, thanks to the harsh LEDs illuminating much of L.A., an increasing number of streets feel like prison yards when the sun goes down.
“I feel like I’m under surveillance in my own home,” Linda Chen said.
Chen said his San Fernando Valley home always felt like a paradise — a quiet slice of suburbia where he and his family could relax at the end of the day. But a few years ago, city workers replaced the orange sodium streetlights outside her home with cool, blue-light LEDs.
Overnight, her once warm, cozy street felt harsh and hostile. A light shone so brightly in his bedroom that it kept him awake until he drew the black curtains.
“It’s like you’re trying to get some sleep on a red-eye flight and the person next to you has their reading lights on the whole time,” he said. “Not the end of the world, but definitely a nuisance.”
Chen plans to downsize in a few years, but he worries that potential buyers will be put off by the bright streetlights hanging above the house, and the resale value of the property will be affected.
He quipped, “I guess we’ll just do the open house during the day.”
LA was an early adopter of LEDs. As of 2013, the Street Lighting Bureau had More than half were swapped The city replaced 220,000 high-pressure sodium lamps with LED bulbs, and the department has systematically converted the remainder over the past few years.
Progress came with some growing pains. At the time, most LEDs on the market were bright and white, so the city went along with that. Modern LEDs run hotter, and the color can be adjusted even after they’ve been installed, but L.A. is stuck with the ones he bought before the technology was developed.
The bureau does not have an exact timeline for when LEDs were installed in each neighborhood in the ongoing transformation. Last year, residents of Venice and North Hollywood suddenly saw lights on their streets like a Walmart parking lot.
Because the bulbs are more efficient than their predecessors, the overhaul reduces annual carbon emissions by 67,000 metric tons and saves approximately $10 million in energy each year.
But lighting in this city is an intimate affair; Los Angeles has long loved its decorative and whimsical street lamps. Ribbons of roses adorn the banks of lights along 6th Street, Chinese dragons hang from lamps on Olympic Boulevard, and topless women watch over Wilshire Boulevard from their cast-iron perches.
so are some angelenos ranked The fact that these ornate, historic lamps are spreading hospital light across a city that, in most other cases, cares about it the way it looks.
There are few solutions for residents. If the city installs an LED light that shines into your bedroom, your only recourse is to request a glare shield, an accessory attached to the lamp that blocks light from certain angles — but it’ll cost you $350.
In letter to the times Many years ago, Joan of Northridge missed the “sweet yellow” glow of the old light. Bob of Simi Valley said, “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” James of Cyprus urged the city to modify LED bulbs to mimic hot sodium bulbs.
Streetlights near Venice Beach on April 30, 2026. The city of Los Angeles is turning to solar streetlights to combat copper wire theft and reduce energy consumption.
travis longcore, an assistant professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, who studies the effects of artificial night light on human health, said this shouldn’t be hard to achieve with LEDs.
“It’s being said that all LEDs are bad, but that’s not the case. You can get warmer colors with LEDs,” Longcore said.
He said the wrong wavelength of light can disrupt our natural processes, such as sleep, appetite and hormone production. The bright sky is a signal that it’s daytime, so getting that signal at night throws everything into disarray. In 2020, longcore Co-published a study Artificial night light, including blue light emitted by LEDs, is being linked to cancer.
Longcore said the problem mostly comes from color temperature (measured in Kelvin) rather than brightness (measured in lumens). The color temperature of older sodium lights was typically around 1,900 Kelvin, which our brains perceive as almost as warm and cozy as fire. But many LED bulbs are set with very high color temperatures, closer to 4,000 Kelvin, which our brains interpret as harsh and bright, regardless of how many lumens they’re actually emitting.
So if everyone hates light blight, why do cities keep installing it?
The Street Lighting Bureau claims that bright lights make neighborhoods safer. This is the FAQ page One study points to a claim that increased lighting levels in New York City led to a 36% reduction in crimes such as murder, robbery, and assault, although many lighting experts dispute that claim.
When the city first started installing LEDs in 2009, the bulbs were set at 4,300 Kelvin, According to a case study. The standard has since been lowered to 3,000 kelvin, but according to Bureau of Street Lighting director Miguel Sanglong, many fixtures installed before 2016 still operate around 4,000 kelvin.
Sanglong said the color temperature cannot be changed because the individual light-emitting diodes in the lamp are manufactured to have a specific color temperature and cannot be changed once made. The downside is being at the forefront of change.
Other cities have taken a more conservative approach. For example, Pasadena is gradually replacing sodium lights with LEDs, but with a Kelvin ceiling of 2,700 to 3,000.
“When L.A. first started installing LEDs, most vendors only made bulbs rated at 4,000 Kelvin or even 5,000 Kelvin,” said Richard Yee, an engineer with Pasadena’s Department of Public Works. “Now, they have bulbs where you can easily change the color temperature.”
Yee said the city actively sought feedback to avoid public backlash.
“Homeowners care about aesthetics,” Yee said. “Whether they’re businesses or residents, we usually check with people before we install anything to see where lighting will be prioritized.”
Longcore says its ideal color temperature is 1,800 Kelvin.
“Brightening crosswalks is critical to saving lives,” he said. “But we don’t need to illuminate everything this way.”
All across Southern California, residents are rebelling against bright LEDs.
One Reddit user told the Times that her boyfriend had become sick of harsh streetlights obstructing the view of the night sky outside their home in Hemet.
One night in 2022, he quietly came out and blasted her with an orange paintball.
The user said, “The paint didn’t cover it completely, but at least the shine wasn’t as harsh as before.”
Glendale resident Pawan Mundy said the city replaced his incandescent streetlights with LEDs in April 2025, and that made his evening walks less comfortable.
“This seems like an example of hostile architecture in the name of ‘public safety’ that is happening everywhere,” he said.
Before the lights were turned off, Mundy, a filmmaker, shot some scenes in his neighborhood for his upcoming film “Middle Life,” specifically because the glow of the amber lights matched the nostalgia of the film. If shot today, the scene would have a completely different experience.
“For Indians like me, we are at the mercy of the available light,” he said. “I hope that politicians at the local level will realize that this is an easy and small way to improve the quality of life for their constituents, even if it’s subtle. I doubt anyone would like to have their neighborhood lit up like a factory.”
There is another crisis happening at the other end of the light spectrum. A growing number of Angelenos have no streetlights.
LA’s vast network of streetlights is connected by 27,000 miles of copper wire. Over the past decade, the price of copper has increased 167%, and theft of copper It skyrocketed 1,200%, leaving thousands of streetlights in the dark.
Copper theft became so rampant that in 2024 the Los Angeles Police Department started a special unit called the Heavy Metal Task Force to track down thieves. The force led to more than 300 arrests but was disbanded last year due to budget cuts. LAist reported.
As a result, the city is inundated with a growing backlog of streetlight repairs – more than 33,000. If your streetlight breaks, the city will take about a year to fix it.
Sanglong told The Times in February that the department had only 185 people to service the city’s 220,000 streetlights.
And unlike other city services, which are financed by the city’s general fund, streetlighting is considered a special benefit, meaning that only property owners who benefit from streetlights pay taxes for them. The tax is unchanged since 1996 due to Proposition 218, which requires voter approval for special assessment increases, but was recently amended by the City Council. approved a plan Sending ballots to homeowners to vote on increasing taxes.
It’s one of two strategies the city is adopting to solve LA’s streetlight crisis. In March, Mayor Karen Bass announced a plan Repairing and replacing 60,000 street lights using solar power technology, so that they no longer depend on copper wires which keep getting stolen. Sanglong said the city has already installed 650 solar lights this fiscal year.
The initiative will cost $65 million, providing funds and resources not typically available for street lighting. So residents and experts are seeing this as an opportunity to finally get the lighting they want.
“This is the ideal time to address the issues of brightness, intensity and color of light,” Longcore said.
It works in other places. In 2020, Longcore worked with Salt Lake City to develop a street lighting plan that brings warmer colors and less light pollution, and she is working on a similar plan for Austin, Texas. Other communities, such as MalibuAs ordinances have been developed to reduce glare and artificial light Joshua Tree National ParkA stargazing shelter designated International Dark Sky Park.
The city’s exact plan is unclear, but Longcore said if crews are adding solar modules to existing lamps, they can add brightness gradients and adjust the intensity to fit the location: brighter for commercial spaces and crosswalks, dimmer for residential streets. But if they’re replacing the entire lamp, they can also change the color temperature to match the warm feeling residents are pushing for.
“We need to make the lighting special,” he said. “If it’s everywhere all the time, and it feels like daytime whenever you’re walking around at night, then it’s not special anymore.”
