Hi All, I’m looking to add some lighting to the front of our home and while I have found lots of great information here and in the technical articles I was hoping a few with a little more experience may be able to provide some suggestions before I place an order for hardware. From the electrical/wiring/installation side I’m very comfortable. However, the design aspect has me second guessing the best way to accomplish some minor goals with this project: The first is to light up the paver walkway from our driveway to the front door. I had originally planned on using traditional path lights (china hat) but have been wondering if something more directional such as one or two Innovators would make more sense in this application (aimed down the length of the walkway). Second, since I will have plenty of capacity left on the transformer, I thought I might also add some up-lighting and garden lighting. The Japanese maple is going to be moved (once it goes dormant in several weeks) to the empty space in the mulch bed at the front left corner of the house. I thought some up-lighting there and perhaps behind each of the Dwarf Hinoki Cypress trees under the large window would bounce some light up the siding and also reveal the two trees slightly. There is a bed with several smaller shrubs/plants in front of the two trees, I’m not sure if some lighting there would be appropriate as well. I am planning on converting a line post lamp to low voltage and placing it next to the last boxwood where the walkway meets the driveway so I will have a little bit of light coming from there as well. Any and all comments would be extremely appreciated. I’m open to a total re-write if I’ve missed the mark entirely on my high level ideas above! Thanks!
I would probably use the traditional path lights, but I found the double hats added a nice touch. I uplit a japanese maple using a single MR11 with a diffusion optic (probably not using the exact term - it is a thin circular optic that sits over the lense), but the placement took awhile to get right. One tip - I found that using 2 Pro Junction Hubs were invaluable to allow me to buy a few lights (with the 25' wire for greater flexibility) and move them around - attaching and then unattaching and moving the fixture from one hub to another, without having to cut the fixture line and start over with dry connectors. Then when I was done, I elected to use the large dry connectors in order to bury everything and keep them out of harm's way (squirrels etc.)
