Hello. Looking for help with lighting design or recommendation for front and sides of my house. I know I like the warm lighting color(2700K). I've also seen your products but I'm unsure which style lighting I need(pathway, spotlights or in ground lighting). Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any help. Devon
Hey Devon, Nice home you have there! I know you said you weren't sure on the exact styles that you needed but, was there anything in particular that you were trying to accomplish with the lighting? Illumination for the walkway, illumination on the garden bed, spotlighting your home and that large tree? Or, a combination of all of those features essentially?
Hello Evan. I would like to accent all of those features if possible including the 2 large/tall trees on the one side. In image 1 it shows some electrical equipment for the neighborhood. I'll prob not try to illuminate that stuff and what you can't see from the photo is right next to that equipment is a tall light pole. So it's all lit up at night anyways. Thank you for the reply. Devon
Understood. It's my pleasure devon! I took the liberty of attaching some photos with my recommendations for where you could consider installing some fixtures for uplighting. For your project, I would recommend using spotlights to illuminate your home and the trees. To get some illumination on the walkway, you could use a few path & area lights scattered where needed. If any of your taller shrubs posed an issue height wise, you could even use extension risers to elevate the height of the spotlights or the path lights above the foliage. Given the garage light and the street light on the left side of the house, there doesn't seem to be a need for much light in this area. One option would be to place a path light in the garden bed on this side of the garage to provide lighting for the side gate/side area. You could illuminate that extremely small, skinny tree but, I would possibly wait until it has matured some more; a feature to consider in the future. A quick and simple option for you would be one of our landscape lighting kits; specifically a (6) Spotlight (4) Pathlight Kit which comes with essentially everything needed for the project.
Sounds like a great plan. Now would the standard 38 degree led be optimal for the spotlights and do you recommend any particular models? Also do you recommend placing all spotlights that are near shrubs above them with the extensions?
The 38-degree beam angle is ideal for most applications; it is essentially the 'standard' angle of the LED bulbs that would come with the spotlights in the landscape lighting kit that I mentioned. The "best" beam spread to use is dependent on the object/feature you are trying to illuminate so it's really on a case-by-case basis with the individual fixtures. For narrow objects, narrow beam angles are ideal and the same applies for wide angles. We do offer integrated LED spotlights as well; they have the light sources built directly in. Just as you can choose the beam spread and color temperature of a light bulb, you can adjust these on an integrated fixture by using any of the additional optics that we offer. It would really come down to preference whether you wanted to be able to replace the light bulb. A lamp-ready spotlight that I would recommend would be the All-Star™ with a budget-friendly alternative being the Fat Boy. For an integrated spotlight, I would recommend either the Infiniti 30 or the Infiniti 40. It is difficult to tell from the photos but, if you could get the lights intended for the house at least a foot away from the wall (where shrubs wouldn't interfere or could be regularly trimmed), then you wouldn't necessarily need a riser. If the shrubs pose too much of a hassle for them and the one path light, then elevating the fixtures would probably be the best option.
Happy to be of help! Be sure to let us know how your project turns out and share some photos if possible!
Hello again. So I ordered a bunch of lights and set them up in the areas you recommended and in some other places. I was curious if you would recommend lighting the pitch in the roof, just above where you had me place spotlights on the front of my house. Wasn’t sure how to do so and which light to use. Also is there a way to reduce the brightness of all the lights on my house. They look great but think maybe they are to bright. Wanted your thoughts. Thanks for the help. I’ll upload a picture shortly with the lights on.
1forlexus, out of curiosity, what are the fixtures/wattages/beam angle of the uplights in those trees to the right of your house? I think they look great.
Other than installing a spotlight using a surface mount on the roof above the window or a pucklight/downlight in the peak, you could illuminate the section from a distance. You could place another spotlight on an extension riser (12" or 24") in the garden bed where the single path light is. With some cable already ran at that spot, you would just need to splice in the lead wire from the new fixture and angle the light to focus on the peak to balance the lighting design. Depending on the fixtures used, you could lower the output a number of ways. If the fixtures are lamp-ready MR16s, you could soften the output with a frosted or diffuser lens (may also slightly widen beams). If they are lamp-ready the other option besides lenses would be to select a lower wattage for the bulbs as we generally advise against dimming any of our LED bulbs or integrated lights.
