Decking lights is a great way to make your deck more safe and more functional.  There are several types of decking lights which include low voltage lighting, highpoint deck lighting, deck step lighting, and accent lights that can be installed on your deck.  Many people think these lights are not as easy as a yard light to install.  This is not true.  The setup is the same as you have a low voltage box that supplies the power to the lights.  You then run cables underneath the deck and just use a drill to install the light into the wood deck.  The process is super easy and most people find decking lights to be easier to install than your traditional yard lights.

Having lights on the deck can really be a nice thing.  Too often people install a huge flood light on the back of their house to light up everything.  This light can be blinding and takes away from the beauty of your yard lights and plants.  To keep the right mood, deck lights do not distract form the scenery around you, but add accentuation and safety to your deck.  If you have stairs, these types of lights are a ffantastic idea.  Nobody likes tripping in the dark or stubbing their toe.  Take a look at some pictures of different examples of deck lighting.

Accent lighting has several different purposes.  You can use outdoor accent lighting to brighten up a flower bed, bring attention to your newly stained deck, or even point the accent lights at your house to show it off.  Whatever purpose you decide to use the outdoor accent lighting is up to you, but the results will be phenomenal.  Outdoor accent lighting fixtures usually come in these styles:

• Flood lights
• Walkway/Path lights
• Colored low voltage garden lights
• High powered spot lights
• And string lights

With all of these different styles you will want to take a look at your garden and determine what type of look you are looking for.  Here are a few examples of exceptional outdoor accent lighting.

As you can see in these two pictures, the accent lighting is on the things that these people felt passionate about.  In the top image, the people accented the trees with spot and flood lights to accent the tree features.  On the bottom picture, the clients used floods, spots, and walkway accent lights to show off the house, palm trees, and walkways.  Anyway you decide to use the accent lights will bring new life to the features and amenities within your yard area.  Start making your yard or garden come to life by adding some outdoor accent lighting!

What exactly is a landscape lighting kit you might ask?  A landscape lighting kit is an all-in-one, all inclusive kit to accentuate your yard and garden.  These kits usually come with and include:

• 5-15 light fixtures
• Landscape Lighting Transformer
• Light fixture wiring
• Light replacement bulbs
• Light fixture planting stakes
• and more!

When buying a landscape lighting kit you cannot go wrong!  What we mean by this is that people who have never put up yard or garden fixtures often don’t know where to even start.  They often buy the wrong light fixtures, don’t get enough amperage in the transformer, and almost always don’t get enough wiring to do the job they want.  With buying a kit, you save yourself from all of these embarrassing moments. The kit usually is catered to the size of garden.  If you have a 5-10 foot garden, 3-5 light fixtures is all you are going to want.  If you have lots of shrubbery or trees, a kit that utilizes flood lights will be the way to go.

Landscape lighting is getting very popular.  The main reason is that people spend tons of time and money on their yards and gardens, so why not show it off?  Yes you get to enjoy your yard during the day, but why not also enjoy it at night?  The best time of day to go out and enjoy your garden is in the cool comfort of the evening and night.  You will find that you can enjoy your garden in a way you never thought about previously by owning and installing a landscape lighting kit.

Why is a transformer needed?  The main reason is because landscape light fixtures use a very low voltage.  The reason the lights use a low voltage is because anything that uses a higher voltage would easily short out and stop working the second the sprinklers turned on.  Another reason that low voltage is used is that is saves you a lot of money on your energy bill and allows you to safely string up and connect several lights to each other without straining the circuit breakers of your home.

What kind of transformer should you buy? This answer is totally dependent on your needs.  Do you need a transformer that turns on at a specific time?  Do you want the transformer to handle 30-50 lights or only 10?  By answering a few of these simple questions you can get a more clear understanding of what you want to accomplish with a landscape lighting transformer.  Most of the yard light transformers include features such as:

• Day and night timers
• Go up to 600+ amps
• Use extremely low current
• Energy Saver Mode
• Work with rechargeable solar lights
• Store solar energy in a battery bank

As you can see landscape lighting transformers have really improved.  Most of the time people plug these transformers into a wall plug in their garage, or in a wall plug out on a patio.  It is better to put your transformer outside if possible because many transformers have a light sensor to automatically turn on your yard lights when it gets dark.  We hope we have answered some of your questions regarding landscape lighting transformers and hope that you get to enjoy the benefits of landscape lighting soon!

Have you ever been driving around at night and seen a home with a beautiful lit up yard?  This is landscape lighting.  Landscape lights are essentially the finishing touches to a landscape design.  Landscape lighting is an art and takes some engineering to make sure you get the desired effect when the sun goes down.

Landscape lighting is almost a status symbol.  Think about it, have you ever seen an expensive hotel without beautiful lit up landscaping at night?  For anyone that has done any landscaping it is easy to understand how much time and money is spent on making your yard and land look presentable and beautiful.  With all this time and money being spent, wouldn’t you want to be able to see the fruits of your labors at night?  We certainly hope that you do and landscape lighting will get you that desired result.

Before you go out and buy a bunch of landcape lighting fixtures, there are a few things that you need to do.  First of all you need to decide on what type of effect that you want.  For example, flood lights do not look as good on walkways, but they look excellent to show off large trees and even large plants.  Once you have decided the types of effects you want in each area of your yard you will be much more prepared to find the right kind of fixtures.

Many people are worried that landscape lighting is expensive.  This simply is not the case.  In fact many landscape lights utilize solar panels and charge during the day so that they don’t have to use any of the electricity from your home to power on at night.  The solar powered lights are definitely the most popular type of landscape light fixture as it pays for itself by how much you save on your electric bill.  Some solar power lights cannot produce certain effects.  Flood lights need a little more juice and must be plugged into electricity.  These types of lights will not hurt your wallet too bad as they run on super low voltage and hardly effect your electric bill.

We have one more tip for you before you run to the store to buy landscape lighting fixtures.  Try to buy fixtures that look like the vegetation.  You want your lights to be very discreet so you are more focused on what’s lit up than the light fixture itself.

Please refer to our other pages to learn about specific light fixture types and prices.

Solar landscape lighting is the perfect environmentally friendly option to lighting up paths and gardens. Solar outdoor garden lighting is low cost by having a built-in photovoltaic panel, which charges up during the day by converting sunlight into electricity. A battery is charged from the photovoltaic panel during the day, and then low-power LEDs can shine for up to 12 hours on a single battery charge. Solar lights get their power from the Sun which is free energy. They are a fantastic way to reduce electricity costs as they don’t incur electricity charges. Garden lighting should offer a blend of cool light sources for planting beds and landscaped areas and warm light sources for outdoor living areas. Individual light sources should be kept dim for compatibility with nighttime ambient light levels and to avoid glare and light pollution. Garden light devices are designed to deal with outdoor conditions, in rainy, freezing or hot areas.

If you have thought at all about installing landscape lighting you should absolutely do it.  You have probably spent countless hours working on your gardens and have definitely spent some money to make your yard presentable.  Why not show it off during the evening hours?  Landscape lighting is a great, low cost way to spruce up your yard at night.

Many people who want to add some landscape lighting to their yard usually do some landscape design or plan to see where they would like the actual landscape lights.  Most of these drawings and plans are designed around one element, the electrical wires that go to the lights.  This fact alone makes it so that people have to change desired light placement just to meet the electrical requirement or to not have to undertake a huge digging project to bury wires underground.  Well there is an answer to this frustrating process,  solar landscape lights.

Solar landscape lighting has been around for a little while and there are a few tips we have in helping you select the perfect solar light fixture for your yard.  Like we mentioned before, solar lights are awesome because you now can place them anywhere without worrying about electrical wires.  This gives you total freedom when designing your landscape lighting plan.

The biggest tip we can give to you when selecting solar powered light fixtures is that you truly get what you pay for.  If you go too cheap and buy the very inexpensive lights, you usually will get a light that doesn’t charge enough during the day to last all night.  Also if you buy the cheap lights they do not put out much light at all, which is the opposite of type of effect you are looking for.  We are not saying to buy the most expensive lights, but find a mid priced light that charges enough during the day to last at night and give off enough light to achieve the desired effect you are looking for.  You can find a good solar light fixture kit from $50 -$80 dollars that will suffice all of your needs.  Make sure you research the light brands and refer to our website as we have lots of information regarding light fixtures.

Another thing to realize is that not every day is going to be a clear sunny day.  Because of this, you need to make sure you find a solar light that needs minimum sun to charge or find a light that only takes a few hours to charge fully as this will ensure your lights will work even in rainy or overcast days.

The last and best feature of all about solar lights is that they pay for themselves.  You can have a beautiful lit up yard by relying on the free power of the sun.  You will save money each year by not having to shell out a dime to run your beautiful landscape lighting fixtures.

Landscape lights can add value to the actual property, meaning the yard.  You have probably invested a lot of time in your landscaping and why shouldn’t  you make some money off that?  Landscape lights help extend that hard work into the night time hours for all to enjoy.  This adds value because people will be able to look at your yard at night and say, “That’s a nice yard, i bet that house is really nice too.”  This technique alone will help you sell your home because many people who are looking for homes drive by the neighborhood at night to check things out and they will automatically be drawn to your house because of the lighting.

Yard lights also add value to your home because it adds safety features.  Although appraisers check your home for railings and other safety features, home buyers also look for well lit pathways and walkways.  No one in this current recession wants to be sued by someone who tripped and fell because of bad lighting in a walkway.  Lights that add security and safety feature raise the value of the home because it prevents future bad situations from happening.

Yard lighting in the back yard is a major plus to homebuyers.  Most homebuyers envision the house they are looking at as a place to invite friends and family, you know a party environment.  Yard lighting is great in this area because it lights up the yard and makes it feel like a beautiful place that you could hang out with your friends and family in a nice warm environment.  Backyards are especially important to light because thats usually where you grill food, have patio furniture, and a fire pit to hang out with friends.

As you can see landscape lighting can play a huge role in the future sale of your home and add value to it.  When you get a counter offer on your home you will be in a much better position to back up the original price you are asking for by having lighting effects that improve safety and provide warm fun places to hang out.

Its a fact that less homes are broken into that have landscape lighting.  Not only will landscape lighting deter most criminals, it also gives you some other types of securities.  Having worked in the real estate and mortgage business for years, i often heard about people that had been sued because someone slipped and fell on their property.  One common factor in many of these stories is that these accidents happened at night when they couldn’t see.  When i was growing up my parents had a long sidewalk walkway on the side of the house.  At night it was very dark and hard to see where you were going.  I was always scared to walk on that side of the house at night because as a child i was scared.  My parents did add lighting eventually and it made that side of the house beautiful.  We had rose bushes that were accentuated at night and i was no longer scared to go on that side of the house at night.  Not only can it curb children’s fears of the dark, but by adding landscape lighting it will save you alot of money as people will be much more less likely to hurt themselves if they can see where they are going.

Homes with landscape lighting look much nicer as well and can give you the security of curb appeal.  In this current recession, people want to do everything they can to improve their home’s worth as homes are deteriorating in value around the country.  Landscape lighting adds some value to your home because it accentuates the hard work you have put into your landscaping.  It also makes your home look more inviting and gives it a very warm demeanor. 

We hope that as you are deciding on landscaping fixtures that you think about these security features that come with adding landscape lighting.  While considering the security aspect, make sure you pick lights that will light up walkways, driveways, and especially steps within your yard.  We are excited for you to extend the love you have for your yard into the night hours and hope you can sleep easy knowing your property is a little more secured.