Whether you’ve worked with a professional outdoor lighting designer, or you’ve worked on your design on your own, you know how much energy goes into making a plan. If you’ve ever looked at designs for your outdoor lighting display, you’ve come across color temperature...
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...
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...
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...
November is here. The Jack O’Lanterns are gone. We know that soon our thoughts will turn to the holiday season. For many of us, this means digging out the Christmas lights and stringing up the house exterior with the seasonal display. Some do more, some do less, some...
The basic goals of outdoor lighting designs for businesses and institutions are much the same as those of homeowners but are often prioritized differently. Private homeowners do have to comply with codes and ordinances that are intended to limit the intrusion of one...
The digital revolution is transforming outdoor lighting designs just like everything else in our lives. Smart lighting is trending up across the board. The term “smart lighting” is a broad one which refers to two related paths of innovation. Lighting...
Before 2010 if you hired a professional outdoor lighting company to install low voltage lighting around your house or yard there was some version of an interchangeable halogen fixture implemented into the system. If you were trying to light up a house, tree, statue,...
Safety and security aside (we’ll address these important considerations in another post) landscape lighting design is shaped by three aesthetic and practical criteria. The main goal in landscape lighting is to make your house/yard look amazing at night. Second, is for...
Up until 2010 most residential outdoor lighting systems ran on line voltage, the 120v/AC current that powers your interior lighting and most of your appliances. Fixtures generally were halogen, providing terrific illumination with a warm, amber quality. Light Emitting...
