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Landscape Lighting Tips: A How to Guide
Why install landscape lighting? 3 reasons and benefits to why you should:
1. Landscape Lighting increases your property value and appeal
By installing any addition to your home you increase its property value, however, the right landscape lighting will instantly make your home look more inviting and beautiful. Use landscape lighting to illuminate your home's best features, from trees and shrubbery to charming brick siding.
2. Instantly make your outdoor areas more inviting
Enjoy outdoor living any time of the day, you and your guests will be pleased and feel safe with outdoor illumination that is alluring during the day and at night.
3. Landscape Lighting deters burglars
According to most sources, burglary is the most common threat to homes in the United States. Ensure your home is kept safe by using landscape lighting to deter these criminals from coming close to your home. You can also set timers on your outdoor fixtures to deter crime when you are away.
A How to Step-by-Step Guide for Buying Landscape Lighting
Step 1: Define the number of zones you will be lighting
Your first step in purchasing landscape lighting is to figure out how many zones you have around your home. Will you be illuminating both the front and back yards? Are there side areas or tree lines you would like to illuminate? Define your zones by number as shown similar to the image on the left.
Step 2: What sizes are your zones?
By measuring the size of the zones around your home you can determine how many fixtures you will need for the amount of light you want and where your most illuminated areas will be. You can also determine how much additional wire you need and what length your fixture runs will need to be in succession.
Step 3: What are your homes' best features?
Decide what areas of your home you would like to light, are there prominent features you would like to accent. These features can include trees, shrubbery, pools, pathways, accent walls, or step lighting. This will help you define which fixtures you will need to purchase for illuminating all of these features.
There are 5 typically categories our landscape fixtures fall in:
Area Lighting - 360° illumination. These fixtures can be used to illuminate any area such as along pathways or in flower beds. Included in this category are well lights which direct light upwards.
Directional Lighting - These fixtures can be aimed at and directed to light up trees, shrubbery, and accent walls. Depending on the application you can choose from a narrow beam light source or a wide beam light source to illuminate more surface area, please see more about this in Step 4.
Pathway and Step Lighting - Fixtures used specifically for illuminating pathways, stairs, or driveways around your home.
Wall Wash - A wide beam or flood light fixture that is used to light up a large portion of an accent wall.
Specialty Lighting - This category includes anything from decorative fixtures, such as pendants or string lights, to underwater lighting.
Step 4: Decide how many fixtures you need
This step is the most important for choosing your new landscape fixtures. Once you have determined what type of fixtures you will need and how large the zones are you would like to light up, you will need to decide how many fixtures you need to allow the preferred amount of light for outside your home. See below for some things to consider when calculating the number of fixtures you need.
How large is your area? Typically for pathway lighting, you would want to space your fixtures 5-10ft apart. The closer your fixtures are, the more light you will have and the more fixtures you will need for your run.
Will you be illuminating any trees? We suggest using directional bullet fixtures for illuminating most trees. You will need to know the type of tree and the approximate height of the tree you want to illuminate to determine how many fixtures you will need. Below is an approximate guide to determining how many directional lights you will need for different size trees.
10-12ft Tree - 1 fixture recommended
20-30ft Tree - 2 fixtures recommended
40-50ft Tree - 3 fixtures recommended
What kind of tree will you be illuminating? Based on what type of tree you have you will either use a narrow beam lamp with your directional fixture or a wide beam lamp. We recommend for thinner trees, such as palm trees, that you use a narrow beam lamp of 30° or less. For large thicker trees, such as oak or maple, we recommend using a wide beam lamp of 35° or more.
Have additional questions on how many fixtures you might need? Give us a call today for help determining what you need for your specific project: 877-533-3002
Step 5: Calculate the wattage and run length
To determine the amount of power you need to run your new landscape lighting you will need to add up the total amount of wattage from each fixture. For example, if you have 10 pathway lights each using a 4-watt lamp, your total wattage will be 40 watts. This will help to determine what kind of transformer you will need. Typically we supply transformers of 60 watts, 100 watts, 150 watts, 200 watts, and 300 watts. Make sure when calculating this number you choose a transformer that is at least 5% more in wattage than the total amount of wattage from your fixture, you should not exceed 95% of your transformer wattage.
How long are your runs?
Your next step in choosing the correct transformer is to figure out how long your run is. For example, you have 10 path lights each spaced 10ft apart in a row, this means your total run length will be 100ft. Any run under 200ft should be no problem for any transformer 200-watts and under, however, if you have a run of more than 200ft you might need a voltage boost so your fixtures do not look dim. Our 300-watt transformers can be made to include this voltage boost which will increase the starting voltage from 12 volts to 15 volts.
Please give us a call if you need help determining what the best transformer is for your project: 877-533-3002
Step 6: Enjoy your new Landscape Lighting!
Once you decide on all of the fixtures you will need and a transformer that will work best for your application you are ready to order and install! Make sure you don't forget to speak with your electrician and order additional wire and wire nuts as needed for your installation as well.
We are also here to help. If you have any questions at all on what you might need please call us today! 877-533-3002