Su***** **am: Dear Margaret, thank you so much for your feedback! We pass your suggestion to the manufacturer, so they can look at the design again. Most probably, they decided the switch this way as they planned the item as what they call maintenance-free light that you have to turn on only once when setting it up. The rest of the time the light will turn itself on at night and off during the day. This is a great concept in general, but sometimes can not be ideal for some circumstances when you need the light on-demand only.