We have started trying to pull some lighting together (kinda fooling around with it) 4 path lights = VOLT® Flux Brass Path Light (Bronze) w/ LED GU4 BiPin Bulbs 2700K two spotlights= All-Star Mini Spotlight w/ LED MR-16 Bulbs 2700K one down light (moonlighting)=VOLT® All-Star™ Brass Downlight (Bronze) w/Single Source 5W LED MR16 60º 4000K I would really like to get some advice at where to go with upper part of house and what to add to bottom. Any insights would be extremely welcomed. (Night picture makes it seem brighter than is actually is..phone pics are never the best)
Hi, John. It’s great to meet another moonlighting fan. There’s a handful of issues I wanted to address before offering placement advice. Because of the cool light temperature for moonlighting, I typically recommend people use moonlighting with caution. In your case, with the moonlighting effect so close to your other lighting, they’re likely blending into each other and effectively washing out each other. So I tend to use moonlighting in distinct areas like along my driveway. If you’ve got moonlighting, you don’t really need pathlighting that will negate its effect and vice versa. But if you do want to keep the moonlight effect, I’d consider going with at most a 3000k color temp. Hth and please write back.
Thank you for your insight..I thought that might be the case. Just fiddling around with things to see how they look, and effect they give. I was thinking that once I get lighting on the upper part of house that the moon lighting will probably move, so
The tree is about 30+feet in front of the walkway ..the picture makes it look closer, but, don't think that changes much.
‘Hi, John. I diagrammed one of your photos to show you one possible plan. To be clear, I think it’s fine to have moonlighting there. My point was about cohesion and getting the most bang for your buck. If the down light is aimed in a way that washes out the impact of the path lights, you could always locate the path lights elsewhere (where the pools of light created will be better defined). Alternatively, you could aim the down light so that the shadows created fall in a different part of your yard. Again, I do recommend that you choose light color temps that are a bit closer to one another. Hth.
What do you mean cool light color temps? and would 150 watt transformer do for all this and one last question, .. The very middle window, as I have access, would doing Down lights from the soffits be advisable to mix up light direction looks ..or do you want all light directed up, and if we did that would the other light to its right be done the same way? or is that just not advisable. Would I use the All Star mini Spotlights w/ LED MR-16 Bulbs 2700K for all of these?
When installing down lights in your trees, your overall goal is to mimic the natural color and effect of moonlight filtering through your trees and projecting shadows onto the ground. I’ve included a couple of examples to illustrate what I’m talking about. You see cool lighting around you all the time. Think of the bluish or purple tinged light from xenon HID headlamps. The older compact fluorescent bulbs are cool. Any bulbs labeled daylight” are typically cool. The orange hue of candle light and sodium street lamp bulbs are towards the warmer end of the color temp spectrum. 2700K and 3000K are considered somewhere in the middle. For the reason I mentioned previously, some people might opt for down lights in those color temps so that there aren’t any jarring color differences in their lighting plan overall. So now you’re starting to think like a designer. There’s any number of ways you can create a cohesive plan. You could stick with just a pair of soffit lights (puck lights) for the stone sections and still have a perfectly cohesive plan. If that third light (to the right of the window above the front door) was also a downlight, you’d have two down lights mirroring the two uplights on your porch columns. Or, you could make the farthest right first level up light a soffit light as well—and up light the two outermost porch columns. Or, or, or… With a 150w transformer it’s not a good idea to go over 120W. So, you could comfortably power about forty 3W fixtures or sixty 2W and so on. All of the spotlight models are well made but my recommendation would be the All Star or the Top Dog. The All Star is probably the most versatile lamp ready uplight VOLT offers. It accepts all lenses/filters, comes in several color temp options, several lamp brightness options, several beam spread options, and two lead wire options. I think it’s the best way for you to cover a variety of different uplighting scenarios. I’d stick with 2700K since that’s what you already have for the other house lights. Hth.
