Landscape Lighting Design can seem overwhelming to someone who hasn’t looked into it before. Whether you’re a new homeowner or you’ve decided it’s time to integrate outdoor lighting into your current home, Houston Lightscape’s guide will help you figure everything...
Springtime will spring before you know it. It’s the golden season for outdoor living, before the formidable Houston summer heat. Time to survey the patio, ready the grill, and get ready for those laid-back evenings with family and friends. Early springtime is also...
The First Law of Residential Landscape Lighting is “less is more”. A design achieves the greatest drama and beauty with as little lighting as possible. How little is “as little as possible”? Generally, just enough to meet safety, security, and functionality needs. An...
A quick search of the internet turns up a lot of content on do-it-yourself (DIY) outdoor and landscape lighting. As a matter of fact, there are literally thousands of articles, blogs, and guides on the subject. Retailers of outdoor lighting hardware naturally promote...
New clients are not always starting from a scratch. Quite a few explain they’ve got outdoor lighting systems already in place. They’re not satisfied with the performance of the system, or perhaps with its general condition. Long-time owners of a property realize one...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
How much light? Outdoor lighting designers hold to the maxim that “less is more.” Homeowners are concerned with security, safety, and utility. A good design, professionally installed and maintained, fully addresses these practical concerns while knocking...
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...
Water features fall into four broad categories: pools, fountains, waterfalls, and streams. Each of these presents a particular set of lighting challenges and opportunities, but all can provide spectacular results. The most basic lighting design question for a water...
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,...
Your home’s curb appeal, it’s attractiveness when viewed from off-property, stirs your own sense of pride but the other important audience comprises visitors, neighbors, and when the time comes, potential buyers. The excellence and the uniqueness of your home’s...
