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Expert Electrical Services for the Home and Business
Exterior Lighting Design
You’ve pulled out all the stops to make your house and yard look first-rate. So why let that hard work disappear at nightfall? With a flick of a switch and some strategically placed landscape lighting, you can roll back the darkness and put it all on display.
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Understanding Landscape Lighting
Landscape lighting involves more than just placing a few lights around your yard. The goal is to create a balanced, aesthetically pleasing nighttime environment that extends your living space outdoors and showcases your property’s best features.
Most modern landscape lighting systems use low-voltage power, which is safer and more cost-effective than traditional 120-volt systems. Low-voltage systems operate on 12 volts, stepped down from your home’s standard electrical supply using a transformer.
This setup allows for greater flexibility in design and easier installation, making it possible to achieve a wide range of lighting effects, from subtle washes of light on walls to dramatic spotlighting of trees and architectural elements.
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Planning Your Landscape Lighting Design
Effective landscape lighting design requires careful planning and consideration of your property’s unique features. A well-thought-out plan will ensure that your lighting enhances your home’s architecture, highlights key landscape elements, and creates the desired ambiance.
We will begin by creating a detailed map of your property, including your home, pathways, trees, and key landscape features. This map will serve as our blueprint for placing lights. Together we will consider the areas you want to highlight and the effects you want to achieve.
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Highlighting Architectural Features
When illuminating your home’s facade, we will use a combination of techniques to create depth and interest. We generally fit bullet lights with bulbs that have 12-degree beam spreads, and aim them at the corners of your house or architectural details. We then place softer wash lights to fill in the space between these focused beams. This layered approach will accentuate your home’s best features while providing overall illumination.
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Illuminating Trees and Plants
Trees and plants can become stunning focal points in your nighttime landscape. For trees less than 20 feet tall, two 20-watt uplights are usually sufficient. Larger trees may require three to five uplights of 35 to 50 watts each. When uplighting trees, be sure to illuminate both the trunk and the canopy to avoid a “floating” effect.
For planting beds, use garden lights to create pools of illumination that guide the eye from one plant to the next. This technique adds depth and dimension to your garden after dark.
Garden Lights
Garden Lights
Garden Lights
Garden lights are versatile fixtures typically mounted on 18- to 24-inch posts. They’re designed to illuminate planting beds and can also serve as pathway markers. Unlike some other landscape lights, garden lights are often decorative, with their style and finish visible as part of the overall landscape design. These lights are great for creating a soft, welcoming glow along garden paths or highlighting the edges of planting areas.
Wash Lights
Garden Lights
Garden Lights
Wash lights produce a soft, diffuse light that’s ideal for illuminating flat surfaces such as facades, privacy fences, and garden walls. They create a gentle, even illumination that can make spaces feel larger and more inviting. These lights are perfect for creating a subtle, atmospheric glow across large surfaces.
Bullet Lights
Garden Lights
Bullet Lights
Bullet lights are compact fixtures often used with narrow-beam bulbs. They’re great for precise lighting of specific features like house details, tree trunks, or garden structures. Their focused beam allows for dramatic highlighting of key elements in your landscape. These lights are ideal for creating contrast and depth in your lighting design.
Well Lights
Flood Lights
Bullet Lights
Well lights are installed in the ground with the bulb housed in a waterproof casing. They provide illumination without the fixture itself being visible, making them perfect for uplighting the underside of plant foliage or grazing the base of walls and facades. Well lights are excellent for creating dramatic effects and highlighting textural elements in your landscape.
Downlights
Flood Lights
Flood Lights
Downlights are typically mounted high in trees or on structures to cast light downward, mimicking natural moonlight. They’re often used to illuminate lawns, paths, or the tree’s own foliage. Downlights usually feature a long shroud around the bulb to eliminate side glare.
Flood Lights
Flood Lights
Flood Lights
Flood lights cast a wide beam of light, typically 40 degrees or more, and are brighter than wash lights. They’re used sparingly to illuminate large areas like tall trees or wide house facades. A collar on the fixture helps minimize side glare. Flood lights are powerful tools for creating broad swaths of light in your landscape design.