Save 80% off your electricity bill
Use 80% less energy
Those are some pretty amazing statistics. Go green. Save energy and save money.
That's not all. The numbers get even better:
The LED bulbs last 12 times longer than the halogen bulb - approximately 50,000 hours!
The LED bulbs should last about 20 years !
It's hard to imagine an environmental and financial case that make more sense.
So here's what to do:
If you don't already have outdoor lighting, call your local outdoor lighting representative and ask for a free quote. Any reputable outdoor lighting company will be willing to come out to your home, give you design ideas based on your goals, and give you a free estimate. With some companies, it's as easy as uploading a picture of your home and they will call you with ideas and a pricing estimate.
If you already have solar outdoor lighting or low-volage outdoor lighting, call about a quote to upgrade to LED bulbs. You may even be able to use your existing lighting fixtures.
Jim Schwartz, the Outdoor Lighting Perspectives owner in St. Louis has been offering the new LED outdoor lighting and LED fixture retrofits for a while now for residential, commercial and Christmas/Holiday lighting.
Offering Outdoor Lighting in St. Louis for over a decade now, Jim has many, many customers using low voltage outdoor lighting. This is still a tremendous option. It costs less on the front end and low voltage is still energy efficient. The bulbs don't last as long as LED bulbs but also cost less up front.
If you're in the St. Louis area and interested in finding out more about LED outdoor lighting, call (636) 561 - 1818.
With garden lighting, there are several different lighting effects you may be trying to achieve:
1) path lighting to illuminate a garden path
2) illuminating low-lying plants or flowers
3) up-lighting larger plants and trees.
To illuminate low-lying plants or flowers, a down-light is best. A down light has a dome of some sort that guides the flow of light downward. This creates the subtle illumination effect that allows you to see an enjoy your beautiful low-lying flowers and plants in the evening.
This domed down light is a copper path light. What's nice about this fixture is you don't see the light source (the bulb) but gently cascading around the beautiful copper fixture, you see the very gentle light that it outputs. This fixture is low voltage.
You can also use the path light to illuminate a garden pathway.
When you have a beautiful brick, sand, grove stone or paver path winding through your garden, you want just enough light be be fully capable of walking the path safely but not so much light as to lose the romantic evening effect of enjoying your garden.
With path lights, it's important to ensure 2 things:
1) You don't want to see the light bulb itself with a fixture that has an exposed light bulb. How many times have we seen that runway effect of solar lights down a path and all we really focus on is the sort of runway effect that they create.
2) You also want to insure that you are using a domed light. The dome that protects and covers the bult casts the light in the path light down also creates the 
romance of subtle lighting.
For larger plants and trees, you will want to use either a bullet light or a well light. Both of these lights cover the light source (bulb) so it doesn't ever blind the eye of a passer-by. The second feature that these light fixtures accomplish is the directionality of the lighting. You want to be able to point the light in one direction and shield it from another direction. It's so very important with outdoor lighting to make sure never to blind anyone with the light. Good lighting design will make sure to accomplish this objective.
Here are a couple examples of tree lighting and tree lighting techniques:
Above you see an example of tree down lighting. This lighting effect is seldom used because of the complexity of installing this lighting. The light fixture needs to be installed in the tree and designed to shine gentle light down through the branches.
The effect of down lighting from a tree is a relatively similar effect to daytime lighting but much more romantic since the low voltage light is gentle and filtered through the evening light.
The next type of tree lighting is tree up lighting.
This is the more conventional type of tree lighting. By using either a bullet light or a well light near to the base of the tree, you are able to cast the light up the trunk and through the branches of the tree to accomplish shadow and depth in your lighting design.
When using tree uplighting, it's nice to select specific trees to illuminate. You do not need to uplight every tree in the area but want to create sort of a column effect by carefully selecting well-spaced trees to create a "scene" in the area you're illuminating. Then, in that area, you can use path lighting to illuminate the low lying flowers and plants.
The next type of tree lighting is palm tree lighting. Palm trees are a special tree not just because of their beauty but because, by design, they are a perfect candidate for uplighting. They have broad trunks and the palm fronds can be so artfully illuminated with one very well placed light from the ground.
The last type of tree lighting is focal tree lighting.
Focal tree lighting is used to illuminate either spectacular trees as you see above or to illuminate just a few special trees within your landscaping.
Send us some pictures of your landscaping and we'll send you back some garden lighting ideas.
I was reading my email this morning. I get this great daily email update from CrunchGear - a part of the vastly popular TechCrunch website. I saw this bright red super fancy computer mouse on there. My blood started pumping and I couldn't click fast enough to see more pictures of this cool new mouse.
All of the sudden my cheap little mouse came screeching to a halt when I saw the price - $99!!!
What really surprised me was the auto-fill on the search box at Amazon when I typed in Logitech MX performance mouse.
These search auto-fills are generated by the most popular searches. So, lots of people were also looking for this mouse.
OK, it's pretty but is anyone actually willing to pay that much money for a computer mouse? Apparently so - there are over 627 reviews for this mouse.
Yep, design matters. Still in sticker shock, I thought about this a little more. On a consumer product, beauty and design are really important. They are. It's not just about personal visual appeal but we all enjoy showing our friends and neighbors and friends a beautiful product that we own. Just look at all the people that buy fancy sports cars.
But, when we are making these decisions, we all make sure that the product quality, workmanship, durability, performance, and product life match and exceed the beauty of the product.
If you've been following this blog, you've heard me say over and over that you should see the light source and not the light. So why is this fixture made out of solid copper and, frankly, really a stunningly beautiful fixture?
Well, the solid copper performs two functions. It's incredibly sturdy unlike the all-too-common plastic fixtures on the market. But the copper serves another purpose. It patinas over time. The patina will allow your solid copper fixtures to blend nicely into your landscape.
What's interesting is study this picture further to find the other identical fixture in the picture. If this fixture wasn't so far in the foreground of this photo, we'd likely have a hard time seeing it also. The copper does happen to blend beautifully with the popular pinestraw landscaping material.
So what is it - should the light source be hidden or seen? Well - both. With architectural lighting on the home, you have the opportunity for the lights to be hidden in the shrubbery at the front of the home. But, on a path, you really have no choice but to see the outdoor lighting fixture. So, in that case, make sure it's both beautiful and durable. When a lighting fixture is not hidden by landscaping or protected by its proximity to a tree or other structure, it will get kicked, run over by kids bikes and more. So make sure your structure is strong enough to withstand the test of time.
Remember the old saying children should be seen, not heard? In the world of commercial outdoor lighting, the fixtures should neither be seen nor heard. What we're looking for in outdoor lighting is illumination for 3 purposes:
- To beautify the area being illuminated
- To light the path and protect people walking around at night
- To draw attention to the facility or sign for the purpose of being found at night
We want to be able to see the building better, see the house better, see the tree better, see the path better, see the sign better. But we don't want to see the fixture. Some commercial fixtures are ok looking but for the most part, they're not spectacular to look at. And even if they are, the reason for outdoor lighting is to see, illuminate and beautify what we already have.
Take a look at this picture. If you look closely it might look familiar. That's because this is the commercial landscape lighting setting at a familiar national retail chain.
There are 3 problems with the design of this commercial landscape lighting:
- Scale
- Overkill
- Visual distraction
- Material/finish
Look at the scale of the size of the commercial lighting fixtures compared to the size of the tree. While there is nice balance in this design, the large size of the fixtures competes with the tree which should be not only the focal point of this design.
The physical size of these fixtures is overkill. This tree is small. The purpose of lighting commercial landscaping is for beautification. It is not for safety nor to direct people to a location. So the desired effect of lighting this tree in commercial outdoor landscape lighting design would be to illuminate the silhouette of the small trunk and to gently graze the leaves with soft romantic light. A very small fixture is necessary to accomplish this objective.
These oversized fixtures are a visual distraction. This is a gorgeous tree and deserves the spotlight in a figurative sense - not a literal sense.
I'm not sure of the material/finish coating of these fixtures. It is likely a paint. While that leads to consistency of color across all fixtures used in this design, they would be better served to use a natural metal which oxidizes and patinas over time such as copper. The other benefit of using a natural metal is that it doesn't peel or scratch.
In short, if your commercial design emphasizes what it's illuminating more than anything else, and if the nighttime effect is what you are looking for, then it's a good design.
At Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, our commercial lighting fixtures come in a variety of natural metals including cast brass and our most popular - copper.
Do you have any photos of the good, the bad and the ugly as it relates to commercial lighting fixtures?
Here are some cut sheets for these fixtures:
Medium range bollard commercial fixture
Commercial flood light
Commercial up-down light
Commercial directional accent light
Commercial bullet light fixture
Commercial pole light/lamp fixture
I was on my way to Pawley's Island right after the 4th holiday and I saw this amazing American flag tribute. I made a mental note to myself of approximately where it was so I could photograph it on the way back.
There was a private residence that had a huge pond out front. Across the back of the pond, they had a series of American flags on elbow poles to lean over the water. I thought about the shape of the poles as I was driving and realized why they used those poles. The pond was gorgeous. The scene with a row of American flags was stunning and meaningful. But to see the reflection of the flags on the water made these two elements come together in a completely new way.
I wondered if the home had landscape lighting and pond lighting and longed to see the scene at night.
To fully appreciate the beauty of this tribute to America, I have to describe the rest of the scene. At the entrance to the drive, they had two flags marking the entrance. As you began to drive down the driveway, they had a statue of the Statue of Liberty flanked by two flags. Then, on the wooden rails that decorated the front of the pond, there were semi-circular flags across.
The whole scene was spectacular.
I envisioned what this scene would look like with landscape lighting. Landscape lighting, and outdoor lighting, is all about shadow and texture. If you use spot lights to illuminate an entire tree or house, you get to see the tree or home the way they look during the day. At night, the shadows created by the light reveal nuances of the texture of a the tree bark. The shadows reveal the subtle features of a window such as the way the slats divide the window panes. Light creates shadows such as the shadow of an American flag on water.
Don't forget that if flying flags at night, they need to be illuminated. We've all heard this but have you wondered where it comes from? The US Code, Title 4; Chapter 1 says the US Flag should be flown only from sunrise to sunset. The code further states that if the flag is flown at night, it must be illuminated.
Do you have any great pictures of illuminated flags? Please send them to us and we will post them on this blog.
Last night we were walking to the fireworks in town. This big old house on a corner right near the center of town has the most amazing old magnolia tree. It's huge. Magnolia blooms are fascinating to watch.
They start out as this fascinating bud with this gorgeous purple color and pineapple-shaped bud, to a perfectly goblet-shaped early bloom to a flower with these bright white perfect petals in a matter of days. And then so quickly after, the petals whither to brown and it's gone. But at any time, looking at a mature magnolia tree, you can see buds in every part of this blooming process.
Magnolia trees are unlike so many other flowering trees that seem to bloom all at once and then fade. Magnolia trees, when flowering, seem to constantly have crops of buds in various stages of bloom.
This tree in town is huge. I can stand and count the various blooms for a long time. So when we walked by the tree, I looked over at my favorite tree only to be blinded by what seemed a spotlight.
The well intended tree lighting was pointed toward the street, thus blinding the passers-by at night. To make it worse, this was also blinding to motorists.
The reason for tree lighting is to be able to enjoy the grandeur of the trunk as well as a gentle wash of lighting on the underside of the canopy. But, if the light is sitting far from the trunk and pointed at about a 90 - 130 degree angle, the purpose will be defeated. Even worse, it can be blinding to the home's residents and to motorists.
As I went to take a picture of this light, I noticed a similarly poorly adjusted light.
This particular light was installed to illuminate the driveway. Unfortunately, it was also sitting at less than a 90-degree angle causing an utterly blinding light to the owners who used the driveway leaving the home.
The next problem with this approach to driveway lighting was they also used the wrong fixture. With this particular fixture, they were not going to be able to accomplish the objective of driveway lighting. This particular fixture - the bullet light - is designed to uplight. It serves the purpose of things like small sign lighting. It needs to have a destination for the light source and that destination cannot be in the eyes of people.
In order to illuminate a drive or path, you need a fixture where the light source not only casts a down shadow, but that shadow also needs to be protected by a dome hood to avoid light blinding.
As you can see in this picture, a path light with a covered dome adequately illuminates the path for walking or driving. At the same time, there is no blinding.
Do you have pictures of effective driveway or magnolia lighting to share?
True, we can still read the name of the development - because I was taking the picture very close to and down toward the sign.
But from the road, all you see is the giant shadow and you can't see the name of the development.
There are three things wrong with this picture:
1) The fixture being used is too large and too apparent.
2) The light is too "hot"
3) The lighting only focuses on the landscaping and not on the commercial sign.
4) The landscaping is overgrown.
Large, ugly fixtures
Light is meant to be seen. Fixtures aren't. Interior lighting has some great decorative fixtures. And outdoor lighting also has some attractive fixtures such as path light fixtures. But, this lighting application would be much better if the fixture was not so obtrusive.
Hot spots are not good in outdoor lighting
Take a closer look at how this oversized fixture creates a "hot spot" on the flowers. It's simply too much light, too close to the photos. It gives it that "blown out" look. The blown out look basically looks like a flash going off and obscures the area that it's attempting to illuminate.
The landscaping in front of this sign is overgrown creating a challenge any way you look at it. If this fixture was all you had to work with, the best thing you could do to improve this is to cut back the landscaping giving the fixture a chance to illuminate the name of the development.
The ideal way to design this commercial sign lighting would be to use an uplight directly in front of the sign and to use a small obscure bullet light in front of the landscaping.
How would you light this commercial application?
As more of our customers start purchasing and changing over to LED light fixtures and light bulbs, we are starting to see some really good math about the savings that can be realized in more energy efficient bulbs.
We recently received this coupon from our energy company, Duke Energy. Their offer - a free 6-pack of energy smart light bulbs. The value of this offer was almost $12 at the retailer where the coupon could be redeemed - WalMart. My husband was ranting and raving about the coupon so I asked to see the coupon to find the hidden disclaimer, offer, or some other indicator that it really was too good to be true. But, Duke Energy was really just handing us $11.88 in free light bulbs.
Being in the business, I realized the savings for the Duke Energy and how it would pay off for Duke and for us. But, I looked on their web site to see the financials in detail. This bulb uses 75% less energy and pays for itself in 6 months. It also lasts 10 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs.
So how can Duke afford to do this?
From their mailing they state, "If every Duke Energy customer receiving this offer installs six CFL's, our customers will save the amount of energy needed to serve 51,000 homes.
So, switching to energy efficient bulbs such as LED's for outdoor lighting will not only pay for itself long before the bulb goes out, it also pays off by saving energy.
When you think of the perfect service man, what comes to mind?The
Maytag Man is the first one that comes to mind for me. Remember the old character whose chagrin was that he never had anything to do because the Maytag machines were so reliable?
Recently I was riding with the general manager of Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Nashville. He was driving me around Nashville showing me lots of lighting installations that they've done. Luckily, along the way, I had the treat of also seeing a couple celebrity homes like Martina McBride's, Alan Jackson's and both Leann Rimes house that was for sale and her new house next to Dave Ramsey's on the very top of what seemed a private mountain.
While on our driving tour, we had slowed to a stop in his large truck when all of the sudden he put the truck in park and jumped out. I couldn't imagine what had happened.
He ran over to one of our copper path lights, crouched down near it and walked up to the door. I opened the window to ask him what was wrong. He called over his shoulder that the path light was leaning and he wanted permission from the homeowner to straighten it. I thought that was odd yet wonderful since the path light sat at the very front of the yard toward the street. Granted he looked professional but he was right that it might look odd and scary to the homeowner if they saw someone jump out of their truck and grab their path light - especially since it's a valuable pure copper fixture.
The owner came to the door and invited him in. He turned to me to give me the sign that he would be only a minute. I wondered if in fact this customer/gentleman was also a friend. The customer told Michael that perhaps one of his switches wasn't working on his lighting automation and asked Michael to check it out while he was there.
It turns out that fixture was also have trouble turning on. When Michael came out, he dug up the ground around the fixture with his hands since we didn't expect to be doing any service that day and didn't have any tools in the truck. He saw that a circuit had come loose. He fixed it with his hands, arranged the mulch back into place and straightened the fixture. He went back to the homeowner and asked the owner to turn on the switch. The fixture worked perfectly then. I saw the owner ask Michael another question to which Michael p'shawed with his hand. The owner had asked what the charge was. Michael had told him "no charge".
When you get an outdoor lighting package, make sure you also get a service plan and a warranty on the fixtures.
You can contact Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Nashville by calling (615) 373 - 0638. You can also read more about them on their Outdoor Lighting Nashville Blog.
As I've said in previous articles, lighting your home is both an art and a science. You want to achieve height, width, depth and texture with your lighting. This article will focus on creating an architectural lighting design plan for your outdoor lighting.
When you are lighting your house, you want to light it from top to bottom and end to end. The vertical lighting serves a more aesthetic purpose while the horizontal lighting serves the more practical purpose of safety and security.
Let's start with vertical lighting. How do you go about diagramming which elements of the front of your home to illuminate? Take a look at this picture below.
If we had lighting design software and input the picture of the home above, the software would probably yield something similar to the image above. Let's look at the vertical blue lines first.
When you look at the front of your home, you want to note all the key vertical lines made by not only the outside corners of your home but also by your front porch and varying reliefs of your home's facade. So everywhere you see a line above is where you will want to place a well light that illuminates the vertical line. Depending on the amount of space in between the major verticals you have illuminated, you may need to place additional lighting so as to avoid any dark spots. This differs for each home but generally you don't want to go more than 3-4 feet without adding another light. So, depending on the width of the foremost facade above, you would likely also have a light either between the two windows or below each of the windows.
The great thing about well lighting is the light source sits close to the home so you will not have any blinding light coming at you when you look out the window.
The next challenge is hitting all the verticals at the top of the home. Ledges, balconies, awnings, porch roofs and other architectural features can create a challenge in achieving illumination all the way to the top of your home. As I said above, this goal serves primarily an aesthetic purpose but if you're designing custom exterior lighting, the last thing you want to to is fail to illuminate all of your home.
Take a look at this picture.
In the first picture above, you might have noticed the alert that the ledges would cause a challenge. This is because the light that sits below will get caught at this ledge and the areas above it will have dark spots. So, you will want to put some small lights above the ledges to illuminate all the way up to both roof tops.
What are your thoughts about this outdoor lighting design planning?