Floodlight Cameras
Installed in
Brooklyn

Four things to check before you call

1. Find the inside switch. Many Brooklyn rear lights are on a wall switch by the kitchen or garden door. If someone switched it off, the camera lost power too. Leave it on and tape over it if you have to.
2. Look at the breaker or fuse. A floodlight that dies whenever it rains can be tripping a GFCI outlet or a breaker. Note which one and whether it resets.
3. Stand where the camera is and check the Wi-Fi. Hold your phone at the garden door: if it shows one bar or none, the camera's dropouts are a signal problem, not a faulty light.
4. Read the app's light settings. “Always on after dusk,” a schedule set by a previous owner, or motion sensitivity at maximum explain most lights that never switch off.

Send what you find with your request. Those answers often tell us whether the fix is a setting, a power supply or a new location for the light.

Brownstones: plain brick at the back, nothing on the front

The rear wall of a brownstone is usually common brick, and that is the easy part: a mounting plate goes into the mortar with sleeve anchors, and a box or a cable entry can be drilled through without touching anything decorative. What makes it slower is height and what is in the way. The garden-floor door is often under a parlor-floor window or a cantilevered deck, so the natural place for a light is about at that window's sill, where it will shine into the room above if it is not angled hard down. We look at the room behind the wall before we pick the height, and on houses where the back has an extension we usually mount on the extension wall so the light falls straight onto the yard.

Two-families: one light, two households

In a Flatbush or Canarsie two-family the yard is often shared and the alley runs past someone's bedroom window. The owner usually wants the light on motion, the upstairs tenant does not want it switching on every time the downstairs tenant takes out the trash. We settle that before mounting: who controls the app, whether the light runs on motion only after midnight, and which window the panels must avoid. In houses with vinyl or aluminum siding we mount on a siding block or a proper flush mount so the plate sits flat and the box behind it stays dry.

Detached houses: distance is the issue, not the wall

A detached house in Marine Park or Mill Basin has the opposite problem from a rowhouse: plenty of wall, but the garage and the end of the driveway can be well away from any power. For a long driveway we usually split the job, one light at the house corner covering the side door and the near half, and a second toward the garage, rather than one very bright light trying to reach both ends and glaring at the street. Where the garage has its own power, the second light can feed from there; where it does not, a network-powered camera on a buried or fence-line cable is often simpler than a new circuit.

Warehouses: height and hardening

On a loading wall in Sunset Park or Red Hook, a consumer floodlight at eight feet is both too weak and too easy to reach. We mount higher, out of reach from the ground and from the top of a parked truck, use fixtures and cameras built for the job, and feed them from the building's own panel or a network switch inside, so there is no exposed cable a thief can cut. Lights over a roll-up door are set so that the door itself does not block the camera when it is open.

Power at the Back of a Brick Rowhouse

Our rowhouse has no outdoor fixture at the rear — what are the options besides cutting a new 120-volt circuit through the brick?

There are three, and we price all of them before you choose. The first is a camera with its own built-in light that runs on one network cable. Power over Ethernet carries both power and data down a single low-voltage cable from a PoE switch or injector indoors; one manufacturer's floodlight model, for example, lists an 1,800-lumen light and 802.3at power on that one cable. On a brick rowhouse that means one small sleeved hole through a mortar joint near the garden door and a cable run inside to wherever the network lives — no new circuit, no breaker work. The second is a plug-in floodlight camera on an existing outdoor GFCI outlet, if there is one within reach; the cord is weatherproof but not armored, so it has to be clipped tight to the wall away from feet and hands. The third is the full answer: a new outdoor box and feed, which in New York City is work for a licensed master electrician under a DOB permit. That gives the brightest light and the cleanest look, and it is worth it when the light needs to be bright or the yard is deep.

The only exterior box at the back is on a switch inside the kitchen — will the camera keep recording when someone flips it off?

No. A floodlight camera on a switched box loses power, and stops recording, the moment the switch goes off, and in a house where the rear light has always been switched by the garden door, someone will switch it off. There are three fixes. The simplest is a switch guard or a blank plate so the switch stays on; the floodlight's own motion sensor and the app then control the light. The tidier one is to have the box made permanently live, which is a small piece of electrical work for a licensed electrician. Some floodlight cameras also let a quick off-and-on of the wall switch force the light on manually, which keeps the switch useful; we check whether your model supports that and show everyone in the house how it behaves. In a two-family, we also label the switch, because the tenant on the garden floor is usually the one who turns it off.

Is the old porch-light box over our garden door strong enough to carry a heavier floodlight camera?

Sometimes not, and it is worth checking before anything is mounted. The light over a Brooklyn garden door was often put up decades ago on a small, shallow box fixed to the brick with a couple of plastic plugs, or set into a hole that has crumbled around it. A floodlight camera with two or three lamp heads weighs more than a single porch light and catches wind, and its plate needs to be fixed solidly to the wall, not hanging off a loose box. We take the old fixture down, look at the box, its fixing and the cable inside, and either reuse it with new anchors into sound mortar, or recommend replacing it. Where the cable inside is old cloth-covered wiring or the box is rusted, the replacement is electrical work for a licensed electrician; we will say so before anything is connected, not after.

Neighbors, Windows and Light That Crosses the Fence

How bright, and how warm a colour, should the light be for a twenty-foot Brooklyn yard?

Far less than the box suggests, and on the warm side. Floodlight cameras are rated for suburban lots: Lorex lists two 2,000-lumen arrays on one model, and the 3,000-lumen line is the one a 2024 City Council bill picked out for residential districts. A typical Brooklyn rear yard is roughly twenty feet wide and not much deeper, closed in by brick and fences that bounce light back, so a fraction of that output lights it fully. We start most rowhouse yards at a low brightness setting in the app and raise it only until a face at the back fence records clearly. Colour matters too: a cooler, bluish white looks harsher through the windows behind you, while a warmer white looks more like an ordinary porch light; several floodlight cameras let you choose. Motion-only operation does the rest, because a modest light that comes on for thirty seconds when someone climbs the fence is both enough for the camera and easy for the street to live with.

A neighbor has complained about our existing floodlight — what can be changed short of taking it down?

Usually enough to end the complaint. Most complaints we see come from three things: the lamp heads are tilted level instead of down, the light is set to stay on all night rather than on motion, or the motion zone reaches into the neighbor's yard so their own movements keep switching it on. Each is fixable in a short visit: re-aim the heads, change the light to motion-only with a short timer, redraw the motion and detection zones to your side of the fence, and lower the brightness. If the fixture cannot be aimed low enough from where it is, moving it a few feet, or swapping it for a model with a shielded or narrower light, does the rest. Brownstoner readers who have dealt with this on both sides tend to give the same first advice — ask politely — and in our experience a light that is visibly re-aimed is the most persuasive reply.

Our fence is low — will the camera end up recording the yard next door?

It will unless it is set not to, and in New York that matters. Civil Rights Law § 52-a gives the owner or tenant of a residential property the right to sue someone who installs a video device on adjoining property to record their backyard without written consent. A floodlight camera aimed down your yard with a low fence will usually catch a strip of the neighbor's ground at the edge of the frame. We deal with it in two ways. First the aim: most of the frame on your yard, your door and your gate. Then privacy masking, where the camera or recorder blacks out a drawn area of the picture permanently, so the neighbor's yard is never recorded at all. Motion zones are set to match, so the neighbor's movements do not trigger the light either. If you share a yard or a fence with relatives next door and both want coverage, put it in writing.

Landmarked Fronts and the Door Light

How many lights may go beside the front door of a landmarked Park Slope house, and can one of them carry a camera?

Two fixtures and one intercom panel per door opening, under the Landmarks Preservation Commission's staff-level criteria, and yes, a light can include a camera if it still reads as a neutral, discreet fixture. Park Slope was designated a historic district in 1973, with a South Slope extension in 2012, so on most of its blocks anything on the front facade is the Commission's business. Its staff can approve light fixtures that sit within or next to the door opening and are compatible in design, size and finish with the building. A wide twin-head floodlight on the face of a brownstone does not meet that. A compact wall light with a camera built in usually can, as can an ordinary approved lantern beside the door with a small camera tucked under the stoop. We bring the manufacturer's cut sheet, which the Commission asks for with the application, and plan the cable to enter through plain masonry behind the fixture so nothing runs across the facade.

Does a floodlight on the rear wall of a landmarked house need anything from the Commission?

Check before you assume it does not. The Commission's rules are written around what is visible: its guidebook steers equipment away from the primary facade, and architects who work with the LPC note that rear additions that cannot be seen from a public street have an easier path. A yard light on the back of a Brooklyn Heights rowhouse that nobody can see from the street is treated very differently from one on the front. But a corner house, a rear wall that shows from a side street, or a house facing a park can make the back visible too. When a house is designated, we look at the rear from the nearest public places before we fix anything, and if the light or camera would show, we recommend the owner confirm with the Commission's staff first. We do not file landmarks applications on the owner's behalf unless asked; we give you the details the application needs.

Our brownstone's areaway and under-stoop entrance are pitch dark — what fits there without breaking the facade rules?

Small and low, which happens to be exactly what the Commission favours. Its general criteria name the space underneath a stoop and behind an areaway wall or fence as discreet places for equipment that has to be on the front. The garden-level entrance under the stoop is also where Brooklyn packages wait and where somebody can stand unseen from the sidewalk. A compact camera with a built-in spotlight fixed into the mortar of the stoop's underside, or a small light and a separate mini camera on the plain masonry beside the under-stoop door, light the space without changing the look of the house. The cable usually goes straight back through the wall into the garden floor, so nothing is visible. We avoid the iron gate and railings entirely, both because the rules say so and because a camera on a gate gets knocked out of aim.

Who Does the Wiring: Electrician, Low-Voltage or Both

What does the DOB's “minor electrical work” category mean for a floodlight swap on a Brooklyn house?

It means a swap is still electrical work in the city's eyes, just a lighter-touch kind. The Department of Buildings lists replacing fixtures in existing outlets, up to five fixtures and with no increase in wattage, as minor electrical work. That category needs a licensed master electrician and a permit, but no design professional and no DOB inspection. So the ten-minute job of taking down a porch light and wiring up a floodlight camera on the same box is not, legally, a homeowner's job in New York City, whatever a box from a big-box store implies. Adding a new outdoor box or a new circuit goes further, into general electrical work, which DOB inspects. On our written quote we spell out which parts of your job fall into which category and who does them, so you are not surprised by an electrician's permit later.

Which part of a floodlight job is low-voltage work, and why does that matter for a brick house?

Everything after the power: the network cable to a PoE camera, the Wi-Fi access point that reaches the yard, the recorder, the switch, the app and the settings. That is what our New York State low-voltage license covers, and on a brick rowhouse it is often the larger share of the work. It matters because the low-voltage route can avoid the 120-volt question altogether. A camera with a built-in light, powered and connected by one network cable, needs no electrical box outdoors, only a weatherproof cable entry. Inside, the cable can follow the cellar ceiling or an existing chase to the network closet. For a garden-door or yard light where a few hundred lumens and a good camera are enough, that route is usually faster, quieter and cheaper. Where the yard is deep or the client wants a bright floodlight, line voltage wins.

Can the floodlight camera run off the same network cable as our other cameras?

Not the same cable, but the same switch and the same recorder, which is usually what people mean. Each network-powered camera needs its own cable back to a PoE switch or a recorder with PoE ports, but if your building already has a recorder with a spare port, or a switch with power to spare, the floodlight camera simply becomes another channel. We check two things first: whether the recorder accepts that camera's stream, and whether the switch can supply the extra power, because a camera with a built-in light draws more than a plain camera, especially when the light and siren are on together. If your current system uses coax rather than network cable, a floodlight camera can still join it through a network recorder or a hybrid recorder; our Brooklyn DVR upgrade page explains that route.

Driveways, Alleys and Detached Houses in Southern Brooklyn

Where should the floodlight sit on a Marine Park house whose driveway runs back to a rear garage?

At the back corner of the house, about where the driveway meets the side door, looking toward the garage. That spot lights the side door, the gap between house and garage and anyone coming up the driveway from the street, which is the route somebody takes to reach the back. It is also usually the closest point to existing power and to the network inside the house. A light on the garage itself, looking back toward the street, sees cars and faces against the streetlight, which is useful, but on its own it leaves the side door in shadow. What we avoid is a bright light at the street end aimed down the driveway: it lights the sidewalk, catches every passer-by and shines into the camera at the other end. Detached houses in Marine Park and Mill Basin usually have the wall space to put the light exactly where it works, rather than wherever the old porch light happened to be.

Do detached houses in Mill Basin or Dyker Heights need different hardware from rowhouses?

Mostly different placement, sometimes different hardware. Detached and semi-detached houses have side yards, garages and in Mill Basin often water at the back, so the distances are longer and the walls are more exposed to wind. That pushes toward floodlight cameras with a wider field of view or a pan-tilt head for a side yard, toward wired power or network cable rather than battery, and toward a recorder rather than cloud-only storage, since a house with four or five floodlights produces a lot of video. Near the water we prefer stainless or well-sealed fixings and keep cable entries pointing down. A rowhouse, by contrast, usually needs one light at the back and a compact fixture at the front, and the question there is the neighbor's window, not the distance.

Dyker Heights draws holiday crowds onto our block — should the camera record the sidewalk at all in December?

It can, but a camera that records the whole sidewalk for a month mostly records strangers. The holiday displays that News 12 described as spanning 11th to 13th avenues and 83rd to 86th streets bring visitors past the houses every evening of the season. A floodlight camera on the front of a house there will trigger constantly and fill its storage with visitors' faces. We usually set the front camera's motion zone tight to the stoop, door and driveway, mask the public sidewalk from recording if the owner prefers, and switch the floodlight itself off at the front for the season, since the displays light the street anyway. The yard and driveway lights carry on as normal. When January comes, we can put the settings back, or the owner can, from the app.

Warehouses, Lots and Loading Doors

Will a consumer floodlight camera hold up on a Sunset Park or Red Hook loading door?

Usually not for long. Consumer floodlight cameras are built for a garden door: modest brightness, a Wi-Fi connection, a plastic housing, and a mounting height someone can reach from a step ladder. On a loading wall they get bumped by trucks, pulled down by anyone who stands on a pallet, lose Wi-Fi through a steel door, and cannot light a yard the size of a warehouse apron. For that wall we fit a commercial LED flood fixture high up, fed from the building's panel by an electrician, and a separate wired camera with good low-light performance, recording to a recorder locked inside. The light and the camera are mounted apart so the camera is not staring into its own light, and both are out of reach. It costs more than a box from the hardware store, but it is still working a year later.

Our East Williamsburg unit shares a building with other tenants — who should own and control the yard light?

Settle it with the landlord before anything goes on the wall. In a converted factory split into small units, the yard, the loading door and the outside walls usually belong to the landlord, and the lease usually says what tenants may fix to them. A light that one tenant puts up and controls from one phone tends to be switched off by the next tenant who finds it annoying. The arrangement that lasts is a light on the building's common power, on a schedule or dusk-to-dawn, with the camera feeding either the landlord's recorder or each tenant's own with permission. If the landlord will not take it on, a tenant can still light and watch their own door with the landlord's written OK, mounted so it comes down cleanly at the end of the lease.

Can the lot light stay on a schedule during business hours but switch to motion after closing?

Yes, and for most Brooklyn businesses that is the right pattern. During opening hours a lit yard helps staff and deliveries; after closing, a light that switches on only when someone walks in is both a warning and a cue for the camera to record in full colour. Many floodlight cameras and most commercial lighting controls support a schedule plus a motion mode. Where the floodlight is a separate commercial fixture rather than a camera with a light, a motion sensor or a timer on the fixture's circuit does the same, and the camera's recorder can be set to send an alert only after hours. We also set the camera to keep recording on motion even when the light is on schedule, so nothing is lost while the lights are on.

Getting a Usable Picture Under Brooklyn Light

Our block's LED streetlight already lights the sidewalk — does a floodlight still add anything at the front?

Often less than people expect, and that is worth knowing before paying for one. New York City swapped its streetlights to LED after a 2013 announcement covering all 250,000 of them, and on many Brooklyn blocks the sidewalk and the stoop are already lit well enough for a decent camera to record in colour. What the streetlight does not do is light the area under the stoop, the vestibule recess or the face of someone standing with their back to it. So at the front we usually recommend a good camera with a small, low-glare light aimed at the door, rather than a big floodlight aimed at the street. The darkness that needs a floodlight is behind the house.

At the back of a rowhouse, should the light and the camera be one unit or two separate devices?

One unit is simpler; two devices often give a better picture. A floodlight camera puts the light and the lens a few inches apart, so the camera sees exactly what the light hits, including the glare off pale paint and brick right in front of it, and anyone at the garden door is lit from straight above. That is fine for a yard where you mainly want to see someone coming over the fence. Where the garden door itself is what you need to identify, a separate camera placed a little further away, on an extension wall or looking back from the fence, records the face from the side while the light does its job from above. It also means a thief who pulls down the light has not taken the camera with it. The two-device route costs a little more and needs two mounting points, so we only recommend it where the door or the gate is the main thing to see.

Is it worth running a network cable to the back of a brownstone rather than relying on Wi-Fi?

Usually, yes, if a reasonable route exists. A router in a front parlor has to get through several interior walls, a staircase and the rear brick wall before it reaches a camera in the yard, and floodlight cameras send a lot of video, so one bar of signal at the garden door tends to mean a camera that drops off in the evening, just when it matters. Adding a mesh node or an outdoor access point at the back fixes the signal but still leaves the camera on wireless. A network cable fixes it for good and, with a PoE model, carries the power as well, so the same small hole through the brick does both jobs. In many brownstones the cellar ceiling gives an easy run from front to back. We test the signal at the exact mounting spot with the house's own network before choosing, and if the yard light is the start of a larger system, plan the network for the whole building at once with our Brooklyn structured cabling team.

1. “Floodlight installation averages about $450”

Inch Calculator's floodlight cost guide, last updated in 2023, puts the national average at about $450, with most projects between $250 and $800 and installation around $150 to $350 per light. Another installation blog puts hiring an electrician for a floodlight camera at around $650 on average. Those figures assume a house where the box is already there, or a short run of new cable through a wood-frame wall.

Brooklyn splits that average in two. Where a sound outdoor box already sits where the light should go, our installation runs $300 to $575 plus the camera, which is in line with the guides. Where the rear wall is bare brick, the job becomes a choice between a new box and feed by a licensed electrician, a network cable to a PoE camera, or a plug-in model on an existing outlet, and the price moves to $575 to $1,500 depending on the route and the distance.

So the useful question is not what floodlight installation costs on average. It is whether there is power where your light should be. A photo of the wall answers that before anyone visits.

2. “No junction box? Use a plug-in kit — no electrical work required”

Installation guides recommend plug-in conversion kits for walls without a box: a weatherproof cord from the floodlight to an outdoor GFCI outlet, “no electrical work required beyond confirming you have a working outdoor outlet nearby.” The same guides note that the outlet must be outdoor-rated and GFCI-protected and that the cable is weatherproof but not armored.

In Brooklyn the catch is the outlet. Most rowhouse rear walls have none, or have one at the garden-floor door that a cord would have to climb three metres of brick to reach a sensible height. A loose cord across a yard used by children, tenants and the recycling bins does not last, and on a landmarked front a visible cord is exactly what the Commission's criteria are written to avoid.

Plug-in models are a good answer where the outlet is close and the cord can be clipped tight into the mortar along a protected route. Where it cannot, the PoE route gives the same no-new-circuit advantage with a cable that can go inside the wall.

3. “Mount it about nine feet up”

Ring's installation guide recommends mounting its floodlight camera about nine feet above the ground where possible, with the motion sensor parallel to the ground. That is sound advice for detecting people walking across a yard, and it is the figure most AI answers repeat.

On the back of a Brooklyn rowhouse, nine feet above the yard often lands right at the sill of the parlor-floor window, or under a deck that blocks half the light. On a house with a rear extension, nine feet up the main wall may put the light behind the extension's roof. And if the yard is lower than the street, as many are, the “ground” is not where you think it is.

We use nine feet as a starting point, then move up or down by what the wall allows: above the window head rather than at the sill, on the extension wall rather than behind it, or on a fence post at the back of the yard looking toward the house. The test is whether the motion sensor still sees someone coming over the back fence.

4. “More lumens means more security”

Floodlight cameras are sold on brightness. Lorex lists one of its Wi-Fi floodlight cameras with two 2,000-lumen light arrays; Reolink lists an 1,800-lumen floodlight on its PoE model. In a suburban driveway that brightness reaches the end of the lot and lights a face at the curb.

In a twenty-foot Brooklyn yard, four thousand lumens is a parking-lot light pointed at the house behind. It glares on brick and pale paint, washes out faces at the door, and becomes the light your neighbors complain about — the Brownstoner reader who could read in bed with the blinds closed was describing exactly this. In 2024 Council Members Robert Holden and Kristy Marmorato introduced Int. 753, which would bar private outdoor lights brighter than 3,000 lumens in residential districts unless they are fully shielded, with a $50 civil penalty. It is a proposal in committee, not law, but a twin-array light at 4,000 lumens is exactly what it describes.

More useful than raw lumens is control: lamp heads that tilt, brightness that can be turned down in the app, motion-only operation with a short timer, and a camera that records colour in moderate light. We size the light to the yard, not to the box.

5. “It's a weekend DIY job — or any electrician can do it”

Manufacturers present floodlight cameras as something a confident homeowner can fit: turn off the breaker, connect three wires, mount the plate. Arlo's own guide says that anyone not comfortable with electrical work should look for a licensed electrician, which is about as far as national advice goes.

New York City is stricter than that. The Department of Buildings says no electrical installation or modification can be performed without a permit and a licensed master electrician, and lists replacing fixtures in existing outlets as minor electrical work that still needs both. A Brooklyn homeowner swapping a porch light for a floodlight camera is doing licensed work, whatever the box says.

The low-voltage side — network cable, PoE, the recorder and the app — is different work, and it is what our New York State low-voltage license covers. Our quote separates the two, so you can see which parts need an electrician and which do not.

6. “Wi-Fi floodlights are wireless, so they go anywhere”

“Wireless” floodlight cameras still need power, and they need a Wi-Fi signal strong enough to carry high-resolution video. Arlo's guide recommends choosing a location with a strong Wi-Fi signal; most AI answers skip that step.

Brownstone and brick walls, plaster on lath and the depth of a rowhouse all eat Wi-Fi. A router in the front parlor often gives one bar or none at the garden door, and the camera drops offline in the evening when the household is streaming. That shows up as a light that comes on with no clip to show for it.

The fix is either a better network at the back — a mesh node or outdoor access point — or a wired camera. A PoE floodlight uses one network cable for power and data, which on a brick house solves both the power and the signal problem in one hole.

7. “Aim it to cover the whole property line”

Generic advice says to cover every approach to the house, including the boundaries. On a large lot that means looking along the fence; on a rowhouse it means looking into three other yards.

New York's Civil Rights Law § 52-a lets a residential owner or tenant sue someone who puts a video device on adjoining property to record their backyard without written consent. A camera fixed to your own wall but pointed over a low fence still puts the neighbor's yard on your recorder, and the light that comes with it lands in their windows.

We cover your own approaches — the back fence, the gate, the garden door, the alley — and mask out the rest. If both neighbors want coverage of a shared space, they agree it in writing. That keeps the footage usable and the neighbors on your side.