Hi, hoping someone can help me figure out what type of lighting would work well for my house so I can go ahead and order from Volt. I've been wanting to do this for a few years now and I'm finally ready to take it on this spring. A few things to know: 1. Looking at the front of my house from the street, my porch extends past the right side (I've added a porch picture to show what I'm talking about). 2. This is DIY, and as handy as I think I am, I'm not sure I'm capable of adding some sort of well-light into the porch stones or driveway asphalt. I'd love to get lights going up the right and left side of the garage, but I'm just not sure I can do it. Suggestions are welcome! 3. I plan on buying the ring transformer. I also plan to add lights to a few backyard trees (maybe later this year), so I want to make sure it has enough power for that. It would be an additional 5 or 6 lights. Not looking for advice here (yet ), but curious if you think it the ring transformer is a good option for this. 4. I'd also like to add some lights to the garden area (pictured). The tree in the picture is a dogwood, and they grow very slowly, so it will stay that size for quite a while. And yes, that's a fake rock Hopefully replacing it with a real one soon or possibly a plant. Thanks so much in advance for your help!
Hey, Rudy. I'm a DIYer like yourself and once you get into lighting, I think you will be surprised at how resourceful you are wrt addressing challenges. I've diagrammed some of your photos to suggest some ideas to consider when creating your lighting plan. I also encourage you to review some of the dozens of previous posts that include lighting plans for homes with similar architecture. If you light the areas indicated by the yellow graphics in the first photo, I think you'll have a very good lighting plan to start with. Basically I'm highlighting the brick work on those three sections of the main part of your house and uplighting the two trees indicated. I'm recommending path lights (aka area lights) to illuminate those two areas of your property (more on that shortly). The orange graphics are areas you may want to consider lighting as you get more comfortable with more challenging installations. Btw, I wasn't sure if you were planning to include your line voltage fixtures (circled) as part of your plan. If so, and you're not in love with those fixtures, you could always replace them with up or uptown light fixtures that also work with the architecture of your home. You asked about lighting your pathway (which is what I assume you mean when you talk about your porch being extended?) but I think you already have the infrastructure to light those areas in a much more straightforward way. For instance, you could easily install path lights in one or both of the mulched areas flanking your pathway. Similarly, there's the garden area in front of that retaining wall where you could place one or more path lights that could at least partially illuminated your driveway. People are often hesitant to install path lights in their lawns. One option to address that concern would be to create a narrow mulched area along the driveway with ornamental grass or small shrubs. You could then place your path lights and they'd be less vulnerable to being struck by lawn equipment or foot traffic. is to create a border along your driveway. The orange graphics in the photo of your border garden indicate different areas you could illuminate. You could, for instance, illuminate that border wall with small floodlights or spotlights. As I mentioned earlier, you could also place path lights in that area with beam spreads wide enough to illuminate both the garden area and part of the driveway. There are many path light and in grade well light options for you to consider as alternatives to in ground well lights. You also asked about the Ring transformer. Although I don't have experience with it myself (I use a different smart lighting system), I recommend that you carefully consider what it is you'd like to accomplish with a smart lighting system beyond what you might already be able to accomplish with existing timer and photocell options. I think the Ring system is great if you want to be able to turn your lights off remotely or if you're using multiple transformers to create lighting zones. The Ring system is also a good way if you want to be able configure your lights so that they are triggered by other events. For example, if you wanted your path lights to turn on at night when you come home, I believe (but don't quote me) you might be able to use the Ring app to turn them on when someone triggers the motion sensor on your porch lights. Again, you'll want to think about how much control you want to have over your lighting system before determining whether a Ring transformer system suits your needs. HTH to get you started.
Hey, @Mesodude2, thank you so much for taking the time to provide your thoughts and marking up the photos. This is awesome! I'm going to look around some more at examples, as you suggested, but I think this is it! Again, I really appreciate your time. To clarify about the extended porch area since I wasn't clear, I was referring to how the first step (that I wrongly referred to as a porch), extends further towards the right, not easily allowing me to install a light there unless I drilled into the stone. My original thought was a well-light installed into the stone, but that's something I probably wouldn't be comfortable with. But, seeing your suggestion about highlighting the brick-work, I actually prefer that now. Thanks again for your help. A little more research about transformers and I'll be ready to order!
