Enjoy Your Landscaping in the Evening with Outdoor Lighting

In the 2013 Residential Landscape Architecture Trends Survey conducted by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), 95.1-percent of the respondents across all categories rated lighting (#3 in the rankings) as one of the most in-demand items for the coming year.  

Ranked ahead of lighting were fire pits/fireplaces  (97.0-percent), and grills (96.3-percent).  The most popular outdoor design elements were outdoor living spaces (94.5-percent), gardens/landscaped spaces (94.4-percent), and outdoor recreation amenities (76.3-percent).  

As we tell all of our customers, it is important to have the design elements in place first before completing a lighting design. That way we can conduct an evening lighting design demonstration to actually show you how your property will look after dark. That’s the best way to ensure that you’ll be receiving maximum enjoyment of your property during the evening hours.  

Now that it’s finally Spring in Colorado (I think we just jumped directly to Summer), Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado has begun scheduling evening lighting design demonstrations. So give us a call 303/948-9656 if you would like to see how beautiful your landscaping can look after dark! 

Finding lighting to enhance these spaces is an essential. Trying to entertain in the dark or off “porch lights” just doesn’t cut it anymore. If you are planning a project of this type, here are a couple ideas on how to complete the look with elegant outdoor lighting:

Safety: One of the absolutes of nearly every project is dark stairs and railings that drop off into darkness in the back yard. This picture is an example of a project we just completed. Notice at the bottom, the small step down into the kitchen area. We added some LED strip lighting on the stair riser to safely light the area so no one will trip entering this potentially dark area.

Downlighting: It’s interesting to see our clients struggle with grilling in the dark or dining on a dark table. Again, looking at our sample work, you see a series of small fixtures installed in the rafters of the pergola to provide lighting for cooking as well as bar top eating.

Aesthetics: Consider some LED strip lighting tucked up under the bar or cap of a stone wall (or wood railing) as we have done here to really make your spaces pop. Notice both the bar front and far back wall are washed with soft ambient LED light. You can even add color changing LED that’s controlled with a remote and you’ll have the coolest back yard in the neighborhood.

Call ElectricQuest 

Hernando (352) 270-3119 or Pasco (727) 437-0674

While LED outdoor lighting fixtures grows in popularity for their energy efficiency, there hasn’t been an option for homeowners who already had lights installed in their yard without replacing the entire fixture.  Until now.

The Outdoor Lighting Perspectives Par 36 LED bulb is making it easy for homeowners by simply changing out a bulb in an existing fixture assembly without any replacement of the fixture itself.  Once installed, this LED bulb has a rated life of 50,000 hours or 19 years if you have them on for 7 hours a day.  There is no socket that can fail and tests show that the bulb could be submerged in one meter of water for thirty minutes and still work.  And most importantly, the color is a warm white that will highlight all the best characteristics of your home and landscape.

We are pleased to offer this option to our customers to make their outdoor lighting systems more energy-efficient by cutting down their energy consumption up to 80%.  If you would like more information on retrofitting your current outdoor lighting system please contact our Austin office.

That is a question that we at Outdoor Lighting Perspectives (OLP) of Colorado are frequently asked this time of year as homeowners look forward to using and enjoying their outdoor spaces.

Our response is that it is never too late to add deck lighting. At a project that we completed this week, the homeowner wanted to have deck lighting installed in the back yard in addition to landscape and architectural lighting for the front yard.

The only existing lighting on the upper deck consisted of two unshielded line voltage carriage lights. When these lights were turned on, the glare ruined the entire ambience of the evening as well as the view of Castle Rock beyond. The homeowners requested the following:

• They wanted three deck lights installed on each of the stucco columns on the upper deck.
• They wanted to be able to control the deck lights manually via a switch inside the house – next to the door leading out to the upper deck.
• They did not want to see any exposed wiring.
• They wanted to have both automatic and manual control options for the landscape lighting in the front yard.

Our installation crew was able to open a small access hole at the bottom of the center column and at the top – and to successfully pull the low voltage wiring home run to the upper deck. From there, the connections to the other two deck lights could be made and wiring pulled to each of the deck light locations. In a few spots, the wiring was hidden at the base of the columns with moulding strips painted to match the stucco.

Deck Light Installed on Stucco Column

The final result looks like the lighting was installed at the same time as the deck – no visible wiring and no visible conduits. The deck lights were also painted to match the stucco after this photo was taken so that they would blend in to and become part of the column itself.

New Switch for Deck Lighting Is a Snap with LCA

Lastly, the manual control of the newly installed deck lights was easily accomplished through the use of OLP’s Lighting Control Automation™ (LCA). The low voltage transformer powering the deck lights was mounted under the lower deck – and on a different electrical circuit than the switches shown in the photo. The switch on the left side controls the carriage lights on the deck – and the switch on the right controls the lights in the dinette. The switch on the right side originally looked exactly the same as the one on the left.

In the photo, the switch on the right was replaced with one of our LCA intelligent switches (note the LED at top), and instead of a solid Decora switch plate – it is now split in half vertically. The left side now controls the dinette lights as before and the right side now controls the new deck lights. Through the use of LCA technology, the deck lighting switch sends a signal from this totally unrelated electrical circuit over to the circuit powering the transformer. It was as simple as that – no new extensive hard-wiring nor interior drywall/painting repairs were required to accomplish this.

Copper flood light outdoor lighting fixture

Now there’s a great solution – outdoor patio lighting and outdoor deck lighting. With proper lighting for your backyard structures, you can enjoy these areas well into the evening – well at any time all through the night.

There are a couple of types of outdoor lighting you can use. For your covered patio, we can either use up lighting or down lighting. Up lighting would be placed near the columns of your covered patio. This illuminates the entire structure without causing any light blinding.

The other type of lighting we can use for your covered patio or covered deck is down lighting. This type of lighting uses gentle lighting that illuminates downward and mimics the effect of the moon. Often a really nice effect is placing the down light in a tree so the light will not only throw light on the desired area but will also cast a pattern by illuminating down through the leaves of the tree.

Cast brass flood light outdoor lighting fixture

This is why you want to use a professional lighting company. Professional landscape lighting and architectural outdoor lighting companies know how to place light to get the desired effect without causing any blinding rays.

When you’re selecting an outdoor lighting company, look for a company that will come out to give you a free estimate. No company should quote your investment over the phone without seeing the area, hearing your goals, and recommending a good solution to accomplish your goals.

At Outdoor Lighting Perspectives we take that a step further. We actually set up temporary lights to show you exactly what it’s going to look like. We come in the early evening and do all the work. You simply take a look and let us know if that’s what you want.

Give us a ring
(512) 247 – 1815