Step lighting adds safety and security and gives a warm friendly welcome. Use lower wattage compact fluorescent lamps give an energy efficient and low maintance solution.
Landscape Lighting Ideas by
Custom Electric Service
Walkway Lighting
Front Lighting
Front lighting makes use of a bold bright light to highlight a tree or element of landscape as the focal point in the area. While drawing attention to the focal point the softness of the shadows in the background add to the total effect. A ground mounted mercury HID fixture accomplishes this while being energy efficient and low maintance.
Step Lighting
Walkway lighting adds safety and security and gives a warm friendly welcome. Compact fluorescent lamps give an energy efficient and low maintance solution.
Wall Wash Lighting
Wall wash lighting uses the wall or the house as the focal point while back lighting scrubs or trees for a shadow effect. Notice the texture of the stone's increases with distance. This can be accomplished with 25 watt compact fluorescent floods. With a estimated 5 year lamp life and only 25 watts of enregy used it is highly energy efficient.
Down Lighting
Down lighting a tree as a focal point is one of thr oldest methods of landscape lighting. An HID fixture usually a mercury (because of the soft blue moon light effect) is placed high in the branches of a tree facing down. This highlights the tops of the lower branches and cast shodows on the ground giving a moon glow effect.
Back Lighting
Back lighting is accomplished by placing the light source between the focal point and a wall this gives a silhouete of the object in contrast to the wall. An energy efficient compact fluorscent or HID in needed depending on the size of the structure.
Uplighting
Up Lighting creates contrast of light and shadow up through the branches of a tree to create a focal point. Compact fluorescent is an effective energy effecient method.
Points in planning your landscape lighting project:
A time clock or photo cell will give you automatic opperation and a
relay will reduce wear on the control.
Decide on your focal point for the center of attention (no more than 2)
Don't over do it, a little bit of light goes a long way, think 1 focal point and smaller accent lights around it.
Line voltage (120) is the most reliable system but more labor intensive
the wiring must be buried 12" on residential property.
Low voltage (12) can be just a few inches down but has a problem with short lamp life and moisture in the connections making it high maintance.
A time clock or photo cell will give you automatic opperation and a
