Blog
2019 TRENDS IN OUTDOOR LIGHTING
2019 has been an interesting and active year in outdoor and landscape lighting. As its days dwindle to a precious few, let’s pause and highlight some of the year’s top outdoor lighting trends. Path lighting, if you will, to next year. The standout markers of 2019 have been in design and technology. As can be […]
HARDSCAPE LIGHTING
HARDSCAPE AND SOFTSCAPE Outdoor living spaces have two basic ingredients: softscape and hardscape. Softscape is all that’s alive and growing. Trees, shrubs, lawns, flowers, succulents, and so forth. Hardscape is pretty much everything else. It’s not living. It’s brick, concrete, stone, metal, and worked wood. These are functional items like driveways, benches, walls, and […]
SELECTING TRANSFORMERS
WHAT IS A TRANSFORMER? A transformer is a box which takes in electricity at X volts and puts out electricity at Y volts. In fact, by the laws of physics voltage isn’t the only thing a transformer changes. In brief, when voltage is stepped down, current steps up and vice versa. However, that can safely […]
OUTDOOR LIGHTING FIXTURES GUIDE
OUTDOOR LIGHTING FIXTURES Guides to outdoor and landscape lighting usually suggest specific design uses for the various types of fixtures. Readers, however, aren’t always familiar with the trade lexicon. Let’s go over the outdoor lighting fixtures menu and shed a little light on it. FLOODLIGHTS AND SPOTLIGHTS Floodlights and spotlights are the basic workhorse […]
LANDSCAPE LIGHTING POWER COSTS
Landscape lighting systems consume electrical power. And alas, electrical power costs money. Therefore, unless money is no object, it’s reasonable to ask how much it costs to power a landscape lighting system. Obviously, any homeowner thinking of having a system put in should perform this due diligence. Likewise, since we’re going to base our math […]
OUTDOOR LIGHTING MAINTENANCE
Outdoor lighting systems need a modicum of maintenance to live long and prosper. The lighting designer ’s mantra is “less is more”. The maintenance version is “a little goes a long way”. It doesn’t take much to keep an outdoor lighting system in tip-top shape. It just takes doing the right things at the right […]
LIGHTING YOUR TREES
In 1913 the poet Joyce Kilmer wrote: “ I think that I shall never see, A poem as lovely as a tree”. Trees are indeed magnificent works of nature. They ’re the most impressive natural features on most of the properties in our area. Lighting trees with 21st-century technology extends our delight in them past […]
HOME SECURITY LIGHTING
WILL OUTDOOR LIGHTING MAKE YOUR HOME SAFER? From time to time there’s an item in the media suggesting that outdoor lighting doesn’t improve home security. One of the arguments is that outdoor lighting is as likely to help a burglar as to deter one. Others note that a majority of residential burglaries happen during […]
DARK SKIES
The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department’s Dark Skies Program estimates that 80% of Americans have never seen the Milky Way. The reason isn’t poor eyesight, bad weather, or lack of a telescope. Rather, it’s because the nights in our developed areas aren’t dark anymore. Some call it “light pollution”. The Milky Way and the stars […]