Good evening. A friend of mine wants to light the exterior of her home and would like your recommendations. She has purchased 7 pathway lights and 10 spotlights from Volt. As well as a transformer and wire. I think she wants to light her front and front side corners as well as some trees. Any help would greatly be appreciated. Devon
Hi Devon. I diagrammed your photos to suggest sections of your house and landscape I would consider lighting. While not crucial, I would recommend at least two spotlights for your trees (due to their wide canopies). The blue stars indicate locations to consider placing path lights. It's a good idea to use path lights to highlight curves, corners, ramps, or other transitions along a path or walkway, entryways (like the entrance to your carport or the gate to your fence), and obstacles or potential trip hazards. You can also use them to highlight garden ornaments or planting beds. To help protect fixtures from lawn maintenance equipment, I often recommend staking path lights near a shrub or near rocks or something else that will visually remind others that they are getting close to the fixtures. The mulched area surrounding the the large tree at the corner is ideally suited for a path light. Other than the two sections indicated to the right of your front porch columns, I think you'll want to use fairly narrow beam spread lamps to highlight the different sections of your house. IMO, lamps with beam spreads of no more than 15 or 20 degrees would work best on most sections. HTH.
Good morning and thank you for the recommendations. Another question. So my friend doesn’t want to run wiring under her driveway or back patio. She would rather have an outlet placed on both sides of the house and place a transformer on each side. Have you heard of anyone doing this before and if so any recommendations on how to deal with 2 photocell timers. Just want to make sure all the lights turn on at the same time.
Using more than one transformer is fairly common. She’ll likely want an astronomical timer (which uses time zone to determine dusk and dawn) for each transformer. These timers eliminate the need to rely on a photocell and they are a good choice for people who want to mount their transformers in a garage or shed or elsewhere indoors.
There's no one perfect way to light these trees. You could go with a couple of 60 degree lamps for the palm tree and a pair of 110 degree lamps for that massive tree at the corner. You could also go with three 60 degree fixtures around the base of that large tree as well. Others might have different recommendations.
