08/19/2026
Mounting fixtures over the playing surface puts the light source directly in a player's line of sight on every lob and overhead. Moving the fixtures to the sides of the court removes the glare from the sky, which is the part players actually feel.
The tradeoff is that side mounting makes the foot candle math harder. Light no longer falls straight down onto the surface, so spacing, aiming, and mounting height have to do more of the work. For Pickleball Kingdom, that tradeoff was worth making, because glare in a player's eyes ruins a point in a way that a slightly harder design problem never will.
We sat down with Karen Nettleton, Vice President of Design and Construction at Pickleball Kingdom, to talk about side-mounted court lighting, holding uniformity across the playing surface, and why the king court gets treated differently from the rest.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why fixtures on the sides of the court beat fixtures over it and how to maintain uniformity
- What side mounting costs you in foot candle design and how to solve for it
- Why a min/max uniformity ratio matters more than a single brightness number
- How much brighter the king court should be than the surrounding courts
- Why player experience is the right measure for a lighting decision
This episode is for pickleball facility owners, club operators, and anyone specifying court lighting who wants players to stop noticing the fixtures.