Illuminating the Outdoors
I can’t stress this enough about landscape lighting. It adds a whole new dimension to your house and can be completely satisfying. We lived in a suburban area that did not believe in street lighting, and it could get obscenely dark throughout the neighborhood. The entrance to the community is always well lit and cared for, but as you make your way further in, it is a relative black void at night. For years we relied on our bright garage and porch lamps. They were sufficient to light up particular areas but limited at best. Over the years, we went from typical light bulbs to compact fluorescent, and now the magical LED’s.
Typical Porch Light
My wife and I would walk the neighborhood, and now and then, see a house with increased lighting and discuss how to add this to our house. As is the case with my wife, she files this away as a gift idea, and it became a Father’s Day gift that year. It became a night and day experience quite literally. No longer would we come home to an uninviting house. You could immediately spot our house the minute you drove into our neighborhood because it was the only well-lit house.
If I were to do it differently and have done this with our new house, I would have installed the lighting myself. The idea of adding lighting always seemed quite daunting. I give the company which installed our lighting all of the credit in the world. They provide a service that many people are not comfortable working with on their own. Electricity can be a scary thing and is best left to professionals in most cases. As I learned what went into the addition of this system, I was surprised to learn how simple it was. The package provided came with a few path lights, upward light diffusers, and a few spotlights. These are all piggy-backed off a mainline, which they wired through our garage. (I may go into further detail in a future post)
When we moved to our new neighborhood, I was surprised to find it to be even darker. It was located much closer to a forested area, and there were even more houses within the subdivision. Our previous neighborhood had 25 places, and the new community had closer to 80. The picture at night, if you would, many beautiful homes. Sorry, you can’t see them, it’s too dark! We were going to have to illuminate this house as well! Part 2