What is the best outdoor lighting system to protect your house from burglars and crime?

How have you set up your outdoor lighting system? Including the garage lights and the lights you might have in your flower beds which "spotlight" your house. Any tips would be helpful as there is an increase in burglaries and car thefts in my area (our cars have been broken into 2x in our driveway). Please HELP! P.S. We have car alarms but the thieves are pretty clever here, no alarms ever go off when cars are broken into. I don't know how they do it, our cars are always locked & alarms off. P.S. We have car alarms but the thieves are pretty clever here, no alarms ever go off when cars are broken into. I don't know how they do it, our cars are always locked & alarms on

Public Comments

1. You definatly need to get a car alarm and a house alarm if you havent yet!! For the lights get floresent outdoor lights for the front porch, backporch and garage. Garage get 2 lights. In your flower bed get floresent lights too if you can find any that are small enough for your flower bed to point on to your house, also get lights to put on the sides of your side walk to your house.
2. I have a motion activated light by my back garage door. I installed lights on top of my patio cover that I can turn on if someone is on the hillside above my home. I have landscape lights in front, back and both sides. I use the spot lights to highlight recessed corners and the fence. I made it look like the spotlights on the fence are highlighting some decorative items I hung on it, but it is really so that burglars know they cannot get over the fence without being seen. I also keep the trees and bushes pruned under the height of the windows so that they do not provide an obscurity that criminals could use to enter. A very bright motion detecting light above the garage door not only gives visitors light to get up to the front entry, but discourages criminals from messing with cars in the drive. Finally, I replaced the fixtures the builder provided at the front entry because they could not accomodate a bright enough bulb to illuminate the entire front walk and porch. Inside my home, I have lights on timers in several rooms so that it always looks like someone is home somewhere in the house. I set them to go off at different times so it also looks like there is more than one person home, but randomly enough that there is no regular schedule. I also make certain that neither mine, nor my neighbors, newspapers, ad circulars or any other stuff, accumulates so that no one knows when any of us are out of town. We rarely leave our garage doors open, even when we are mowing the lawn. We've had a lot of petty theft of tools, CDs out of cars, stored items in garages, in broad daylight. I think theives scope out the garages, pick out what they are after, get in and out in a flash.
3. I have placed motion-sensor lights on either side of my garage and by my side door. I don't use floodlights; I bought classy-looking carriage-type lights and, to be environmentally correct, I use CFL ("curly") bulbs in them. I plan to add even more motion-sensor lights in the next year. My truck has been broken into 5 times in 2 years (absolutely nothing in it of value; it's a 1993 Chevrolet S-10 with 134,000 miles). Motion-sensor lights are a little more expensive, but it's reassuring to pull into the driveway or open the side door and have the outdoor lights come on automatically!