Hi All-- I'm new to Volt and to this forum and I recently undertook the grand task of upgrading my landscape lighting. As you'll see in the photos, I installed a few uplights on the house and a tree as well as staggered path lights along the sidewalk. The spots are Top Dogs and the paths are Max Spreads. I know the photos look extra bright (to the point of overlighting) but it's just my camera adjusting the photo. The spots are throwing 5w and the paths are 3w, both are at 2700K. Aside from needing to make some adjustments to the spots, I'm having trouble with two dark areas: the front door and the garage. Again, these sections look a lot lighter than they really are due to my camera adjusting for the lack of lighting. They really are quite dark. 1. Front Door - The front door is the priority. As there is a very small, narrow porch in front of the door, I cannot use ground-mounted spots. I don't mind attaching spots to the wooden railings, but I was wondering if a single low-powered flood or wash light mounted in the right place could handle the lighting for the whole section (as opposed to mounting two spots). Open to any other suggestions, too (including changes to my current configuration)! Also, do you guys think I should install a few step lights on alternating stairs? Once the porch is lighted there might be enough ambient light for them to not be necessary... 2. Garage - It's not absolutely necessary to light the garage, I'm ok with it being dark and just excluding it from the lighting plan. However, this forum produces amazing ideas so I thought I'd throw it out there. Thank you in advance! Brock
Terrific house, Brock. And looks like you're off to a decent start with your lighting plan. Please see my diagram of one of your photos for my beam spread recommendations. Siding can be really challenging to light effectively. Fortunately, it looks like your house and property are laid out in a way that compensates for that challenge. Those 5W fixtures are brighter than I would choose for a house as lightly colored as yours but we all like what we like and you have better sense of the overall effect than I do looking at your photos on a computer monitor. But I would encourage you to raise your glare guards and/or go with a narrower beam spread lamp so that you can better highlight sections of the siding and minimize any potential light trespass issues. The shadows that are being created by the slats in your siding can be minimized by bringing your fixtures farther away from the house. As it is, you're grazing the facade (great for showing off stonework or brick work detail) when washing it would minimize that banding effect. Bring the fixtures further away from the wall (18 inches should be sufficient) and you'll minimize the shadows and show off the color of your house better. When you have a setup that seems less than ideal, you have to get creative sometimes. It looks like your porch is made of wood. If that's the case, you should be able to surface mount your spotlights directly on the porch. You could also mount it to a cement or concrete porch if you have the right tools to do this in a way that minimizes potential damage to the porch. A less destructive approach would be to put a couple of planters on the porch and stake (or otherwise stabilize) the fixtures inside. Regardless of how you do this, you'll want your fixtures as far away from the walls so that you minimize that striping effect previously mentioned. You''ll probably also have to get creative about hiding your wiring up there. From what I can see, you don't need any more lighting there for the steps as it is, and you definitely won't need more once you've uplighted that section above your front porch. If you can figure out a way to conceal the wiring sufficiently, either highlighting the wall bordering each side of the garage door with spotlights or tucking a puck light underneath the frame of the garage door (assuming there's room enough) would look great. You could also simply choose some bulbs for those sconces that would complement the rest of your lighting. And of course, if you're not absolutely in love with those fixtures you could switch them out and replace them with up or up/down lights. I'd recommend a similar restrained approach for your trees and shrubs as I suggested for your house. Consider dialing back your brightness and highlighting (rather than flooding) plants and trees to give your lighting plan a softer and more welcoming tone. If it's in your budget to experiment with 3000K, I recommend that you see how that looks on your trees and shrubs. You might find that it's an interesting contrast from the impact of the 2700Ks on your house. HTH
Thanks Meso! Let me see what I can do with your recommendations above! I’ll switch the spots to 15 degree bulbs. If I scale back the wattage to 3W, would you suggest the 1.5W or 3W puck for above the garage? Which puck would you suggest if I don’t scale back the wattage?
Because it might look a bit off to have some lights on the house significantly brighter than others, I'd go with the 3W BuddyPro Plus fixture. Either way I'd go with the brighter version. Note, there's new "Bi-pin" versions of puck lights at a lower price point (see the New products section) so you may want to ask the helpful folks at VOLT what you're getting by spending a little bit more. https://www.voltlighting.com/buddypro-plus-led-hardscape-puck-light
