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Writer's pictureGUY CASTRANOVA

How to Design Your Landscape Lighting in 5 Easy Steps

Landscape lighting is one of the easiest ways to make your home look stunning. People who spot your home from far away would get attracted to it. It adds to the overall exterior beauty of your house. Many times you don’t understand this on your own that a simple dark exterior section of your home which looks dead might start looking beautiful when it is given the proper lightning and in turn, would start looking the most beautiful part of your house. We at top dog electric are ready to help you with landscape lighting in Broward County. Our team has worked on several projects around the city and changed the look of old dull-looking houses into bright modern and trendy houses. Further, let’s have a look at prominently used five steps that will develop a very distinctive and trendy design of your property and it would look stunning as soon as the sunsets.


Landscape Lighting
How to Design Your Landscape Lighting in 5 Easy Steps

Form Ideas for Your Landscape Layout

The very initial thing is to form the ideas about how the layout should be. What all things would suit the exterior and sync in beautifully with already present outer furnishing. One should walk around the area during the day as well as during the night to get a close insight and to generate ideas of how exactly the setting should turn out to be. Gathering the main points and generating a clear understanding of where you could place a beautiful palm, placing juniper shrubs, a beautiful oak tree in corners all these ideas will do wonders to your home. Few hardscape features can also be added in order to enhance the idea of giving your home a rejuvenated look. The accented stone wall looks beautiful when enlightened amidst a beautiful natural setting, so it will be a win-win if you decide to use it for your exterior space. All these ideas when coming together and are executed with perfection are bound to look at your house, which you have always been dreaming for. There are many other ideas for residential landscape lighting design, all you have to do at your end is to give a thorough screening to your ideas and the collective ideas from skilled individuals and make a precise plan once you are certain about what exactly you want your landscape lighting design to look like. Once you are certain about your decision, the excellence of modern exterior lightning will do all the remaining tricks. They act like the cream on a cake when placed intelligently in the right places. From the narrow ceilings to the deck area, and from the garden corners to driveways and porches, these mini beautiful lights will be the game-changer in the overall transformation.


Make a Sketch of The Landscape

A sketch will help you give an idea of the resemblance of what the layout of your exterior is going to look like. One should have the idea of the parameter he is about to cover, and then the follow up on inclusion of vegetation, palm trees, oak tree, shrubs, decks, benches, and all the other decoration which you wish and are considering including. Try to include everything in your sketch which were in your ideas initially, this will let you have an idea that if they fit well in reality. Assuming the height and length of all the objects to be included is also important. This will give you an idea of how much space each of those objects will take so you can accommodate each of them according to your present dimension.


Select Your Landscape Lighting Fixtures

Nothing is more important than choosing the right fixtures for the area in your pursuit of perfect landscape lightning. Two questions are largely considered, the first is recognizing if you have an existing lighting system, and the second is an assessment of how large is your layout. Choosing between the 120V or 12V landscape lighting system will be essential. Normally, if you have got an existing landscape infrastructure of 120v, only then the lightning system of 120V will be recommended. Or else 120V is an expensive choice and installation is pretty tedious and tricky. In comparison, a low voltage lighting system of 12V which is supplied through a central power supply is much recommended. There are recommendations of many lights that can be used in the process; they are namely path and area lights which are assumed great on illuminating walkways. Then there are accent lights, which can be placed under shrubs or other placed architecture and they would enlighten the beauty of them to a different extent. Then there are in-ground lights that illuminate the driveways and walking paths, wall wash lights used for generating wide light on a façade or garden wall to make it look beautiful. There are also hardscape fixtures, submersible, and other indicator lights which make the overall landscape of the house look exactly how you dreamed it to be. The electrical contractors in Broward County will give you an exact idea of what light will fit was to give a perfect look to your place.


Fixture Spacing

This process, in particular, can be subjective; a length of 6 ft wire is normally required for the spacing of landscape lightning, let us discuss how much distance is generally kept between different flashes of lightning.


A 10-inch distance is usually recommended between the path and area lights. One has to understand that their work is to guide a person across the path not to illuminate it. With accent lights, almost 4 fixtures might be required for a big tree or statue, and for the small ones 1-2 might be enough. Wall wash lights can be placed about 1-2 ft from the wall so that they can cast the light in the right way and one can spread these lights on a distance of almost 6-8 ft. with hardscape fixtures a strip of almost 3 inches would be enough for small areas and a 6-inch strip if a larger area is being covered.


Wire Runs, Power Supplies, and Final Layout

When you are almost done with all the above processes, it’s time to bring your lightning system to life. If you ended opting for a 12V low voltage lighting system, one transformer would be more than enough to run your entire landscape lighting. All you have to do is to select the right size of the transformer, which should have a wattage capacity ranging anywhere between 75 to 600 watts. A powerful transformer will leave you with on option of expansion. If you wish to add more to your landscape lighting system after a while, you will not have to worry about the existing setup. The usage of powerful LEDs has already bought a revolution in lighting technology and these LED will be the main architect of your overall illuminated lighting landscape.



We at Top Dog Electric are all set to help you with your landscape lighting in Broward County. We have a team of skilled professionals who have been engaged in helping people make their exterior space beautiful over the years. We have the relevant skills and experience to understand your desire and demands and we work exactly according to what you wish to have in your home sweet home.

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