Many moons ago when I woz a wee lad it was easy to work out which borough you were in as, aside from Concrete lights, every borough had it's own lamp post livery.

For example in Merton you had light grey with black tip of base, Lambeth you had blue with cream (later changed to red with cream), Croydon had silver, light green for some roads next to parks and darker green for streets in the former borough of Coulsdon and Purley.

Johnny nice painter would put it better than I can, as I understand that the current liveries for all three boroughs on new installations, along with countless other boroughs is: Black. Black. Black.


Is this a dictat from on high or is black paint cheaper? It seems a strange choice as I would have thought a bright colour would be ideal to minimise them lamp posts being pranged?

Inner London black
Outer London grey

Draw your own conclusions...

Sheffield started doing it in about 1997 following on from a direction from the Sheffield Development Corporation insisting it was done on the schemes they funded in the early to mid 90's. It was purely because it was considered a "cooler" more sophisticated style than boring grey street furniture. I'm sure many others also prefer black for the same reasons, but it does look dirty from road salt/grime a lot quicker.

I have seen some with white stripes around the black lampposts, WWII blackout style. Perhaps with the switching off of streetlights we will soon have white kerbs as well.

Can't argue that black doesn't look good; the gaslight lookalikes are better in black than green or other colors, same for the new post-tops I've seen, especially the WRTL Stela.

Black is reflecting the state that this society is in at the moment.

TSRGD no longer permits two tone colunns and black is considered environnentally sensitive.

Wigan uses battleship grey except for black in town centres and other special cases.

What on earth is the government doing legislating on whether streetlights can have more than one colour.

I'm wondering how mandating one colour (with an apparent preference for black) is compatible with the DDA, given that such things as all capitals on bus blinds are apparently verboten under the same act.

It does seem a typical case of bureaucracy gone mad. It is considered OK to paint black then put stripes around the post but not to have a tasteful two colour scheme though it seems acceptable to line a road with flag poles (nect to the lampposts) with a dual colour scheme.

It might turn out to be an urban legend (and I really should check before posting somewhere like this ) but I was always told that the reason for black in London was to do with a dictat from Queen Victoria when Prince Albert died that all street furniture was to be painted black and that from that moment it became the norm.

I've always preferred black. It does hide a multitude of sins, say where some of the lights may be a bit mixed. In Yorks for example, some streets with quite a nasty mix of streetlights did look better after being painted black.

Grey is just an awful 'communist-state' colour. Other colours used elsewhere can also be very gawdy. North Tyneside painted all of their a strange mint blue colour - yuck, but I think they are going for black! Newcastle, I think were a yellow-orange, which are now thankfully black. Gateshead used Austin Allegro-brown and beige for theirs. Some have been replaced with poles that are just galvanised. In absence of any PFI agreement (I think), Gateshead will keep their poles and replace just the lanterns in mosts instances. Not as bad of the bodge-it and scarper days of Leeds in the 1990s (horrible sleeving usually complemented by insulation tape wrapped around lanterns being a common sight) but it won't not far off!!

Two tone costs money and most of the time looks crap - cf the blue and grey of LB Hillingdon...

That's on the TfL street network, though - borough roads do now tend to be black. I have to say I've always disliked Croydon's silver columns and won't mourn their passing.

Bromley still uses a shade of leafy green, which is quite unobtrusive.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Leicester, then. They have quite an interesting two tone brown/grey scheme which is on more or less every column.

Nottingham still paint their columns a deep green (though other colours are sometimes used) and have a PFI. Derby use a darker (greenish) colour still.

Since when did the ban on two tone come in? I still see them in places that have always had them. How about the columns that are left in galvanised silver with a black base - will that be outlawed too?

Wolverhampton switched from two tone sky-blue/grey to just grey 10 years ago I think. There are still some areas with the old two tone style (like my street, for one).

Recently, however, they have started painting the columns within the ring road black, even though the modern streetlighting they put up a few years ago is still grey...

Here are a few more examples to consider.....

Oxfordshire-Green
Suffolk-Green (including some of the actual lanterns!)
Shropshire-Lime green in some areas, particularly north of the county.

Wirral used to be red/cream livery, now being painted off white.
Liverpool-Battleship grey with some black.
Southport also red/cream livery not sure if this is being changed.

Cheshire uses galvanised columns, I think they look abit minging to be honest and should be painted.

Thats a perfectly valid opinion, but surely is a matter for the residents of the said borough to decide via their elected representatives, not to have the man from whitehall forbidding it. This seems like a typical example of the petty authoritarianism that the last government was rather good at.




And with it 100 or so years of history. In some ways Croydon will not be Croydon without Silver Lamp posts. I'm rather disappointed that silver is going. It will mean in a few years time you could be anywhere in south London.

I'm also wondering whether the new PFI lamp posts will all come on at the same time like the old ones -a legacy of central switching due to the mains in the area being d.c. rather than a.c. until Croydon A power station closed in the '70s. Apparently it made it very difficult for residents to buy appliances like washing machines.

Direction 41 of the TSRGD 2002 specifies that all posts should be of a single colour. The exemption applies to the black protective paint at the base of a column as that is a functional element of the column as opposed to a colour scheme.



The elected representatives usually couldn't give a flying stuff what colour their lampposts are. In any case, street furniture should be providing a road safety function, not promoting a brand. I cannot see what benefit having two tone lamp columns provides other than increased maintenance costs and therefore higher council tax. And I liked the old two tones in some areas (blue and white is a nice mix), but see why we don't bother anymore.