There are roughly 6,000 street lights within the City of Davis. The city has replaced many of the old high-pressure sodium street lights with power efficient LED lights. Street lights in Davis have hoods on them preventing light from uselessly going up into the sky and causing light pollution. Despite confusion, this is the only requirement upon them, and there's no lack of them due to the light ordinance.

Contact the city about broken lights

Interactive Map of City street lights

Most of the bike paths still have the "sodium orange" lights.Many streets have switched to newer, warmer and friendlier LED lights, like this one.The new LED lights even cast nearly normal shadows for everything except those right next to the lights (mostly tree branches). 

LED Controversy

Some residents are upset with the quality of the new LED lights. Claiming they are obnoxiously bright and produce unnatural looking shadows. The City contends they are on a frequency that doesn't strain your eyes, use a lot less power, don't require expensive ballasts, and last the city a minimum of four times longer. Change isn't sodium orange, it's brilliant white. Besides don't worry there is a group that does research into lighting on 2nd Street and Spafford Street (they pioneered them) and they are aware of the brilliance.

Due to controversy over the new LED lights, the city solicited feedback on possible alternatives August 13-24th in 2014. The sample lights were installed on Oyster Bay Drive in West Davis and a smaller sample is in the North Davis Greenbelt where Elk Place intersects.

The city solicited feedback regarding eight potential lights for greenbelt and park lighting from March 18th to April 1st and April 11th to April 18th in 2016. The test lights were installed on the greenbelt near Arroyo Park in West Davis.

News Coverage:



My only complaint about the new lights is they look like xenon/HID headlights from around blind corners. The trick is to realize that they are static & not a moving car. That being said I'm extremely pleased to see the sodium vapor bulbs finally get the boot. ~SD

2014-08-19 10:53:24   The shadows they cast really bug me. I'm not sure why they can't use a different sheet of diffusion to remove that odd patterning effect. —ToddKaiser

2014-10-24 13:48:15   There a number of pathway lights out around Davis. Requests for repair are denied apparently because the city is trying to switch to LED as this page describes, and doesn't want to fix a light that will just be replaced. But some of the lights in my neighborhood have been out for nearly 2 years. Considering our tax rates, this level of deferred maintenance is pretty unacceptable. If you agree please call Mitch Sears at 530-747-5888 or Maria Brillantes at 530-757-5686. —YellowPostIt

  • Keep in mind that the plan to switch to the new lights was finally given the green light this past Tuesday at the council meeting, so you should be seeing changes very soon. —DavidGrundler