I would appreciate your advice on what landscape lighting to use on my house after just redoing the landscaping. I would like all of the lighting to be 2700K color for a warm look, beyond that I am open to ideas. Front Door Light: There is one existing wall light to the left of the front door. Hardscape Step Lights: My landscaper installed an Original Volt 6" and 3" Brass Rotatable/Pivoting LED Hardscape light on two of the steps leading to the front door. Path Lighting: I was thinking of using 4 - Max Spread Mini's along the front sidewalk path and separating them by 11'-12' (see red flags in picture). Does this make sense? What wattage would you recommend using? Any advantage to using Max Spread 24" lights over Mini's for my application? Lighting on House: What would you recommend for lighting the house (e.g. location of lights, distance from house, fixture type, beam angle, wattage)? Landscape Lighting: I was thinking of having lights on three trees 1) on the bed to the left of the house there is a clumping magnolia that will eventually be 12'-15' tall x 8'-10' wide when grown, 2) In the bed to the left of the front door under the windows there is a Japanese Maple that will eventually be 4' tall x 6' wide, 3) on the bed off to the right of the house there is a Dogwood that will eventually reach 15-25' by 15-25' wide. What would you recommend for lighting these trees (e.g. 1 underneath vs. 2 lights out a little and at different angles, fixture type, beam angle, wattage)? Connectors: Do you recommend using the wire nut connectors or micro-junction direct burial connectors for reliability? I would like a classy look and have appreciated many of the design ideas that Mesodude 2 has recommended to others. Thanks in Advance! Bucks2
Hi, Bucks2 and thanks for the kind words. Lots to unpack in your post but I'll do my best to touch on most of your main questions. First, I think it's great that you have an idea of the kind of mood you want to create. You have a beautiful house and a big plus is that your landscaping is new and that will give you a lot more flexibility (more on that shortly) wrt where you position your fixtures than you'd have with more established plantings. I diagrammed a couple of your photos to illustrate how I would approach lighting a home like yours. It's very straightforward. At minimum I would light the areas indicated by the yellow graphics. When you have a light colored house and low ambient light, a little light goes a long way. I think you'd have a very impressive plan by lighting those sections of the house alone. Depending on the level of brightness you want overall, you could also illuminate the sections indicated by the orange graphics. This is one of those situations that comes down to personal preference. You may find that you're happy with just the yellow areas illuminated. Or you could experiment with lighting the orange areas as well and decide you like that layout even better. For projects that I've completed for myself and others, my mindset is that less is more. You want to highlight the house so that the overall structure can be seen vs illuminating the facade entirely. I love the idea of lighting the house facade in a way that makes it look almost like a different house than it does in daylight hours. When you highlight only the yellow areas, you allow spillover light and reflected light define the rest of the house. With the exception of the area between the pair of windows on the left section of the house, I recommend beam spreads no wider than 20°. For that largest section, I would probably go no wider than 40°. One of several major decisions for you will be whether you want to emphasize the texture of the outer walls and details like your quoins or you want to "wash" those with light in a way that de-emphasizes shadows and surface texture. To home in on which of those effects appeals to you more, I highly recommend you search for some illuminated homes with similar architecture and brickwork. I believe there's at least one house with a quoins pattern similar to the one on your house in the VOLT customer project gallery. Getting back to an earlier point, because these are newly planted shrubs at your foundation, you have lots of flexibility to move things around so that you can zero in on the precise degree of detail you want to produce on the facade. I don't often give unsolicited advice but I think that in your case I'm obliged to make an exception. First, I really think you should consider bringing some of your shrubs a bit further away from the wall. This will address a few potential future issues. For one thing, you'll literally give the shrubs more breathing room (they're less likely to become diseased or attracts pests) and it's safer for the walls of the house. Having them further away from the house may also give you a convenient way to both hide and protect your fixtures from damage. For your path lights (see the second pic with blue graphics), I recommend that you take advantage of those mulched beds and stagger the fixtures along the walkway. This makes the walkway look more natural and adds a degree of complexity to your overall lighting plan. If your priority is safety, you want to highlight transitions along the pathway. Because your house sits above street level, I think the Max Minis are a great choice. HTH to get you started. that largest section, I'd go no wider than 40°
Hi Mesodude2, Great advice on the lighting and also on the plantings!!! For the spotlights on the house we were thinking of using Top Dog Scotty Spotlights and keeping the lights 12" from the house to highlight the quoins and textures. We would like to have a warm classy look vs. being over lighted. What wattage would you recommend we use if we went with the yellow and orange lights as you outlined above? What wattage if we went with the yellow lights only? For path lights we will go with the Max Spread Minis, what wattage would you recommend to have a similar ambiance to the rest? For the 3 trees mentioned above we were also thinking of using Top Dog Scotty Spotlights, what would be your recommendation for lighting a) 1 underneath vs. 2 lights out a little and at different angles? b) beam angle for each? c) wattage? Thanks again for your all of your help! Buck2
Glad to be of help. I really think it's important for you to first carefully consider how much light you want in the immediate vicinity of your house overall. For instance, I have about 36 lights (a half a dozen 1.5W paths and the rest are 2W spots and floods) in my plan overall. That probably sounds like a lot but nearly a quarter of that is lights on the largest tree in my front yard. Another quarter are on the facade itself, the rest are on the sides of the house tucked behind and underneath shrubs. They are well spread out throughout the property and, again, a lot of light is muted by being shielded by shrubs. If I were to squeeze all those fixtures onto the front side of my house, it would be lit up like a strip mall. A few pics here to further illustrate my point. I think this first photo is one of the most impressive plans I've ever seen. As you can see, the only lights directly on the facade are on the portico columns. The rest of the facade is essential a projection screen softly illuminated by light that filters through shrubs and trees that are unlighted. There's a couple of path lights in the foreground of the photo but basically the palm trees are illuminated softly but still brightly enough that they themselves serve as path lights. This is a very thoughtful and compelling light plan, imo. I included the other photos to further demonstrate how it's possible to illuminate a house without flooding the entire facade with light. Oh yeah, you asked questions, didn't you? For your house, 2W should be more than adequate. IMO, given the light color of your house, 3W (even without illuminating the orange areas) will amp up the brightness factor significantly. In the unlikely event that you find that the 2W are brighter than you want, you can always use filters that will dial back the brightness somewhat. For the path lights, I'd go with 1.5W or 2W tops. The thing to keep in mind about path lights is that the light produced will be slightly amped up by the white reflective coating underneath the fixture canopy and also because some of that light will bounce off of the relatively light colored surface of your pathway. For the young shrubs, I'm not sure you need more than a single fixture on them at this stage in their growth. You might be able to get away with a mini All Star for these smaller shrubs and then later add or swap in new fixtures as they begin to grow. I think anywhere from 38 to 60 degrees should work for these. It might be helpful for you to use one of the narrow beam spread facade fixtures or buy one of the 20/40/60 adjustable lamps so that you can experiment to see which beam spread works best. At the end of the day, it really is a personal preference. A bit more unsolicited advice?If any of those large trees to either side of your house (especially the one with the fiery red foliage) are part of your property, I would seriously consider illuminating one or more of those (if it's within your budget). They really are magnificent and would really dial up your property's curb appeal. HTH.
Thanks Mesodude2! If I go with 2W lights on the house, it looks like the bulbs only come in 38 degree angle and no 15-20 degrees are available. What suggestions do you have (e.g. go with 3W, go with 2W 38 degree in the areas in the yellow and orange areas, find 2W 15-20 degree somewhere)? For the path lights, if I go with Max Spread Minis will I need 3 or 4 lights to cover 50' run with the lower light having less spread than regular Max Spread? Other option is to stay with 3 lights and go with regular Max Spread which cover larger range.
There’s probably a practical or scientific reason that 15 degree beam angles aren’t offered, because I’ve always wondered why that is. Ultimately, I think the beam angle control may be something you want to discuss with customer service before making a purchase. If you explain to them exactly what you want to accomplish, they can offer technical advice I can’t. Having said that, I would probably go with the three watt lamps and then add frosted lenses. These will dial back your brightness somewhat but you’ll likely still be brighter than 2W. And if you are at all concerned about over-lighting, 3W in all of those sections ( including the orange areas) might be more light than you want (based on the look and feel you’re shooting for). I think you’d want them anyway because they do a great job of softening edges and they give a more refined look than the plain lens produces. They also mute the level of detail you’ll see when you uplight certain surfaces.To counter that effect, you might have to move your fixtures closer to the foundation. I want to recommend a different fixture for your path lights. If I didn’t explain earlier, my concern is that the light source would be visible from the street level (because your house sits higher than the street level and the canopy for the maxi spread is fairly shallow). I think the standard ht version of the conehead fixture would work there because the canopy pitch is much steeper. It produces a pool of light about 12 feet in diameter so, if you want one continuous projection of light onto the path, four should fit the bill perfectly http://www.voltlighting.com/conehead-brass-path-light
Hi Mesodude2, I was thinking of going with the adjustable beam lights and noticed that the light output on the photometrics output for the bulbs all at 38-40 degrees and 10' distance were: 2W MR16 regular bulb @ 38 degree = 2.4 foot candles 3W MR16 adjustable beam angle bulb, set @ 40 degree = 2.0 foot candles 3W MR16 regular bulb @ 38 degree = 3.6 foot candles Therefore, based on the specs it looks as though the 3W adjustable angle bulb is putting out much less light than a 3W regular bulb and even slightly less than the 2W regular bulb. Does this make sense? For a subtle look, I could go with the 3W adjustable beam as they appear to be close to the brightness of the regular 2W bulb or just go with 2W - 38 degree bulbs everywhere. Alternatively, if the lights are positioned 1' from the house and grazing the surface of the stucco, could I use the 2W 38 degree lights everywhere instead of 2W @ 20 degree (although you indicated to go with 2W - 20 degree, they are not available) as light intrusion into windows should be low with the close location to the house? Thanks! Bucks2
Unfortunately, I’m not sure I have the technical vocabulary to answer all aspects of your question, Bucks2. Once questions get down to this degree of granularity, I encourage other members to contact customer service.
Hi Mesodude2, This house looks very similar to the type of design I would like to achieve. Could you let me know what wattage bulbs you would recommend to achieve a similar look? Thanks, Glen
IMO, the 3W would be the ideal choice for you. In the MR16s, it's the lowest lumens level you can go and still have the 15° beam spread option. Beam spread wise, i'd go with 15° in all the locations except for the area between the two windows on the far left section of your house. There, I'd go with a 60°
