Illuminations Lighting Design’s services and creative solutions will bring a whole new level of living and business experience to clients in any walk of life or occupation. Our goal is to enhance homes and buildings and fill landscapes and interiors with the only thing in existence that occupies space without consuming square footage - light. Contact us so we can create such an experience for your unique reality regardless of industry, vocation, lifestyle, personal tastes, or personal faith.
Electrical Contracting Services
Regardless of the size, age or complexity of your home, the professionals at Illuminations Lighting Design will get the wiring done right the first time. Since 1980, Illuminations Lighting Design has built and nurtured a reputation for unparalleled performance, reasonable rates and fast, friendly service in the demanding custom home market. Our experienced staff of seasoned electrical professionals and licensed electricians are dedicated to providing solid electrical solutions that incorporate innovative Houston home construction techniques and "State of the art" new home wiring methods.
Landscape Lighting Design Services
The average homeowner already has an eye for aesthetic and artistic value; otherwise they would not have invested in a quality home that reflects good taste. Many lighting companies fail to recognize this fact. ILD takes a completely different approach based upon respect for client intelligence. We know that when a client calls our office, that person already has a general vision for landscape lighting design fixed firmly in mind. We then take that general vision and initiate a process where that vision becomes a concrete reality.
Fine Art & Display Lighting Services
Illuminations Lighting and Design services Houston and Greater Texas residents with the very best in display lighting and fine art lighting. Residential art lighting design requires precision and thorough consultation to determine photometric, wattage, and voltage measurements to ensure reliable, safe illumination of creative masterpieces. ILD consultants have proven their value time and again in this respect, and have earned the trust of eclectic communities in both public and private spheres.
When Illumination Lighting and Design wires a new home, we don’t just lay the copper and turn on the lights. We thoughtfully plan and implement the wiring of every new home to meet the needs of daily life and to cover all bases in the event of an emergency. Why not call us today and experience the peace of mind and excellent service we can contribute to your life’s dream?
Illuminations Lighting Design
607 Durham Drive
Houston, Texas 77007-5316
(713) 863-1133 Main Line
(800) 863-1184 Toll Free
(713) 863-0044 Fax
We are located in Houston Texas but provide lighting and residential lighting plans in Austin TX, El Paso Texas, San Antonio TX, College Station Texas, Beaumont TX, Dallas Texas, Midland Tx and points beyond.
Labels: Electrical Service, Houston Electrical Construction Experts, Houston Electrical Contractors, houston landscape lighting, Houston Lighting Design Company, Houston Lighting Services
The art of light will add function, dimension, and beauty to your home. It will add color to mood, and shadow to accent in a manner that strengthens the impressions of room decor and brings the most important room elements into the forefront of awareness. Lighting design specialists by ILD make this happen through a process that begins with consultation and concludes with superior luminance and lighting controls.
When we arrive at your home, we begin with a lighting design consultation. Our experts listen to what you have to say and get a clear understanding of your lifestyle requirements. They apply their years of experience in interior decorating and architectural cross-training to look for innovative ways to layer light as art in every room of the home.
Once we have a general design plan in mind, we take a look at your electrical service panel and your home wiring. This is to ensure that your current electrical home systems can support the light fixtures we plan to install. If an upgrade to the panel is necessary, or if new home wiring is needed, we can make these improvements at this time. This very necessary foundational component of art as light is something that only a trained residential electrical contractor can provide, and we offer you the advantage of getting both design and electrical services from the same team of professionals.
The installation of fixtures then begins according to the home lighting floor plans we agree upon and the mitigating factors of room interior architecture. Light travels in a straight line, so any object in its path will cast a shadow behind it. Contrary to assumption, we do not want to do away with all shadows in the room. Shadows create interest and a feeling of added dimension. This is one of the things that differentiate the art of light from general, functional lighting. The decor created by varying degrees of illumination in different areas of the room works to accent special objects, furnishings, and nuances of interior decorating.
Another attribute of the art of light that makes it very different than simple task lighting is its intentional use of color as a tool of design. Varying the color of lights changes the way we perceive contents. In whole house audio systems and home theaters, we rely upon colored light to support musical themes and to create specific atmospheres for different genres of music and film. This requires home automation and control systems which we install along with your lighting fixtures.
These lighting controls can be operated completely by computer, and they can be manually controlled through user friendly wall panels and hand-held remotes. Preprogrammed themes can be set to turn on with music at certain times of the day. Home theaters can be programmed to emulate the mood lighting of public cinema. This turns your home into an entertainment center that can rival any night on the town.
The most important lighting controls are those that handle intensity. Dimmer controls allow you to raise and lower the light levels of different types of fixtures. You may want to increase general room lighting in certain places to give you greater visibility for reading or working in the room. At other times, you may want to lower these lights and turn up art lighting to create a warmer, more intimate setting. Halogen lights are ideal for this type of lighting control. They produce a very white light which can be raised and lowered at will and is excellent for setting mood, recreating shadows, and art lighting.
We normally install a variety of halogen style lamps in various shapes, styles, and wattages. This allows us to create multiple layers of illumination that emphasize different elements of room design. Architecture, interior decorating, fine art, statuary, and furnishings can all be embellished in this fashion. The combination of quality and quantity results in a blend of ambiance, shadow, and varying intensities that bring room elements to the forefront of attention and fine living to the best possible light.
Since 1980, Illuminations Lighting Deign has grown to include a team of over 50 talented and dedicated employees. Specialty divisions have been created to focus on such disciplines as lighting design, electrical contracting, landscape lighting and home automation. Having specialists in each of these disciplines, while remaining true to the mission of offering home owners the "complete picture" of lighting design, is key to continued success at Illuminations Lighting.
We invite you to contact us toll free at 800-863-1184 or locally at 713-863-1133.
Our offices are located in Houston Texas but provide lighting and design services in Austin TX, El Paso Texas, San Antonio TX, College Station Texas, Beaumont TX, Dallas Texas, Midland Tx and points beyond.Labels: Art Lighting Consultants, Art of Light, Houston Residential Electrical Contractors, Residential Art Lighting, Texas Landscape Lighting Designers
Residential electrical contractors are very different from a commercial electrician because of the enormous differences between homes and commercial environments. Homes are built very differently than office buildings, warehouses, and factories. Wiring in commercial structures always requires insulation in the form of armor coating and pipe conduits.
Homes do not require all of this. As a result, residential electrical contractors use different materials such as low voltage and romex wire for residential service installations. They face different structural challenges, too. In residential environments, you will find a blend of simple and complex challenges. Custom homes with over 5,000 square feet of floor space typically represent the most complex environments. Residential wiring specialists have to have a clear understanding of architecture and construction in order to know how to approach each house as its own unique work environment.
Each set of challenges is relative to the age of the home, its original wiring design, current appliances in use, and indoor and outdoor lighting equipment. All of these things tie into the central hub of the electrical service panel. This panel controls the distribution of power to every electrical system and component in the home. Very few older homes have dedicated circuits, so the first thing a residential electrical contractor will investigate is the age of the house. This will provide an understanding of what service panel upgrades will be required to create more efficient and safe home environment.
This is why we cross train our residential electrical contractors in architectural and construction theory. This helps them understand the many different evolutions that home electrical wiring has undergone over the past few decades. Our electrical service specialists can go to any home in Houston, find out when it was built, and know at a glance what needs to be done to make it fully compliant with current fire codes and energy efficiency standards. Older homes will no doubt need interior light fixture retrofits and dedicated circuits to curb excessive power consumption.
Newer homes are built to be more friendly to energy efficient appliances and lighting. Most are constructed with crawl spaces built into the attic so electricians can move around easier. They are also built with better insulation. New homes now use tankless solutions to generate hot water, and they are built in anticipation of new home wiring runs so there will be minimal cutting of walls and ceilings. Residential electrical contractors who are understand these new building styles can quickly spot the opportunities in non-invasive upgrades and can upgrade your wiring and lighting without making a mess or damaging your home in the process.
Many of the nicest homes in Houston, however, are not that new. Take a drive through River Oaks, Memorial, West University, or Bellaire and you will see many mansion-sized homes that were built in the 50s and 60s. These houses are masterpieces of architecture with wiring that is sorely outdated in many cases. Fortunately, though, our residential electrical contractors know just how to upgrade electrical services in these homes without damaging their structure and diminishing their value.
Typically they begin by getting rid of the old water heater (which is a power hog) and installing a tank less hot water solution. They then look at all important electronic components and systems in the home (such as stereos, computers, home theaters, and HVAC systems) and install dedicated circuits to provide more efficient and stable flow of power to the equipment. Our residential electrical remodeling contractors also install commercial grade surge suppressors to protect your investments against transient power surge, and they install natural gas home generators for permanent, whole-house emergency power backups.
We always offer our clients the options of better house lights and landscape lights to further beautify their homes and yards. These systems consist of primarily low voltage landscape lighting fixtures that do not cost that much to run. Security lights can be installed with to provide you with an extra line of home defense against potential burglars.
Regardless of the nature of the electrical upgrades or electric repairs recommended, we always work with the goal of saving you money on power cost and making your home a safer place to live.
Since 1980, Illuminations Lighting Deign has grown to include a team of over 50 talented and dedicated employees. Specialty divisions have been created to focus on such disciplines as lighting design, electrical contracting, landscape lighting and home automation. Having specialists in each of these disciplines, while remaining true to the mission of offering home owners the "complete picture" of lighting design, is key to continued success at Illuminations Lighting.
We invite you to contact us toll free at 800-863-1184 or locally at 713-863-1133. We are located in Houston Texas but provide lighting and house lighting plans in Austin TX, El Paso Texas, San Antonio TX, College Station Texas, Beaumont TX, Dallas Texas, Midland Tx and points beyond. Labels: Houston Electrical Contractors, Houston Electrical Panel Upgrades, Houston Electrical Repairs, Houston Emergency Backup Generators
When your electrical power goes out, you have two emergency power options: a portable generator or stationary generators. Most people we encounter originally tried using portable, gasoline powered generators.
They end up encountering a number of problems with these units. They can only power a portion of their home and a few key appliances, and operating the generator in the wrong place can prove extremely hazardous to human health because of carbon monoxide poising. Natural gas home generators have proven to be much more effective than gasoline powered equivalents, and far more practical for home use than the diesel generators used in commercial arenas.
When clients ask us about upgrading to diesel, we try to steer than back to natural gas emergency power generators for a number of reasons. The biggest of these is that few homes have the necessary room to operate such a piece of equipment. Diesel has a very long shelf life due to the additives that are in it, so it makes sense to store it in a warehouse environment. A warehouse has plenty of storage room for fuel and for the large fuel tank. Natural gas home generators are much more practical for the smaller spaces located behind garages or in mechanical areas. Gas is clean burning and is a stable source of energy. It is not subject to the same outages that afflict electrical service when trees fall or lightning strikes.
ILD residential electrical contractors provide both the natural gas generator itself and coordinate the turnkey installation of the unit. It is much better to let professionals choose the unit and to coordinate the various parties that will be involve in hooking it up. Determining the size of the unit is the most critical factor in providing safe, whole house power backup. Knowledge of the home service panel and wiring systems will be required to make an accurate assessment of the power needs of the entire house.
It is also necessary to have a conversation with the light company at this point about home power usage. The electric company has detailed records on every home and what its power usage curve is during normal times and at times of emergency. By combining this data from the survey of home demand and electrical subsystems, ILD residential electrical remodeling specialists can then determine exactly how much electricity or maximum amperage will be necessary to power the entire house in a worse-case scenario power outage.
Once this determination is made, ILD orders the appropriately sized unit and obtains from the manufacture information on how much natural gas the home electrical generator consumes per minute. We subcontract a licensed plumber to physically connect the unit to the gas line. The plumber will first check the pressure regulator and pipe work to ensure that the flow of gas meets the requirements of the generator plus those of the rest of the home. Any necessary adjustments will be made at this time.
Once everything is set, the unit is mounted in either a mechanical room or behind the garage and connected to the gas line. In the event that there is no practical or safe place to mount the natural gas home generator, we will hire a concrete company to pour a slab upon which we can install the unit.
If you are interesting in a "Turn Key" emergency standby power generator solution for your home, please call the residential electrical services specialists at Illuminations Lighting Design.
Contact our Master Electrician at Illuminations Lighting Design at 713-863-1133 to learn more about houston home construction, home lighting controls, surge protection, electrical panel upgrades or to schedule a complimentary in home consultation. Labels: Emergency Power Generator Installation, Home Standby Generator Installation, Independant Residential Electrical Contractor, Natural Gas Generators Houston, Residential Backup Generator
The City of Houston Convention & Entertainment Facilities Department through its contract with the Houston Arts Alliance and following the recommendation of the Richard Lippold Foundation, commissioned ILD, Houston’s premier fine art lighting company to specify and install a high performance sculpture lighting system for the Gemini II sculpture in Jones Hall.
This superb metal sculpture is the work of Milwaukee-born artist Richard Lippold, and was commissioned in 1966 by the Houston Endowment and has hung for the past 42 years in Downtown Houston Jones Hall. Its web-like design is created by a combination of polished aluminum and gold-plated wire. The wires stretch from the focal point to the axis of the sculpture and generate magnificent interplay of light between the reflective surface of the meal and the transparent appearance of the wires.
This makes the artwork lighting an integral part of the display, and something that requires the best in equipment and effect to produce.
The original sculpture lighting system, installed years before, had performed adequately enough, but it had never done complete justice to the piece. Consisting of thirty 150PAR38 incandescent lamps, it relied upon light bulbs have been used for decades. These fixtures have since become undesirable because of their short lamp life and extreme power consumption for lighting art. They also produce something of a warm color temperature (2800K to be exact), which is less than optimum for this type of display. Ideally, a metal sculpture should be lit with a very cool color temperature lamp that produces a very white light.
After conducting a series of tests on possible fixture configurations, the design team of Tom Kretzschmar and Lance Gandy decided on a modern art lighting system that combined the best in light quality, energy efficiency, and low-maintenance. Illuminations lighting designers chose theatrical fixtures made by Source Four, and they custom built a mounting rack to support the equipment.
The luminaires specified by art lighting consultants Kretzschmar and Gandy feature 150 watt ceramic metal halide lamps. These lamps are built with custom tube shields that have concentric ring louvers designed to minimize glare. They are also manufactured with computer-engineered reflectors that capture and focus the light. Ceramic metal halide technology and enhanced optical design make these lights so efficient that it only took six of them to do the job that thirty incandescent fixtures were previously needed to do!
These lamps are also six times more energy efficient than 150PAR38 incandescent lamps. Savings on operating costs were guaranteed to begin accruing in a matter of a few short months. Even better, comes every one of these six lamps is rated at an average life of 12,000 hours—bringing a drastic reduction in the cost of replacement lamps and maintenance calls.
Sculpture lighting has significantly improved as well since we installed our new lighting system. The new fixtures produce a very white, cool color of light that is ideal for the polished aluminum and gold-plated wiring. They are controlled by an astronomical clock that turns the lights under the sculpture at sundown and keeps them on until 1:00AM for your viewing pleasure.
When illuminated by the new high-end lighting system, the floating sculptural components now gleam like floating glass rods in the night, and the gold-plated wiring erupt like a web of light that seems to spring from surrounding walls.
Whomever the artist and wherever the artwork is located, you can trust the lighting professionals at Illuminations Lighting Design to design and implement a fine art lighting theme that will showcase your collection in the best possible light on a budget you can afford. Let a trained fine art lighting company help you with your art collection.
Contact us toll free at 800-863-1184 or locally at 713-863-1133 to request a design proposal.
Since 1980, ILD has grown to include a team of over 50 talented and dedicated employees. Specialty divisions have been created to focus on such disciplines as lighting design, electrical contracting, landscape lighting and home automation. Having specialists in each of these disciplines, while remaining true to the mission of offering home owners the "complete picture" of lighting design, is key to continued success at Illuminations Lighting.
We are located in Houston Texas but provide lighting in Austin TX, El Paso Texas, San Antonio TX, College Station Texas, Beaumont TX, Dallas Texas, Midland Tx and points beyond. Labels: Fine Art Lighting Company Texas, Houston Sculpture Lighting, Jones Hall Sculpture Lights, Lighting Consultants Fine Art
Electrical system installation by Illuminations Lighting and Design consists of four major core service offerings to ensure maximum operability, safety, and viability of your home wiring, electrical devices, and vital home systems.
Home Electrical Circuit Panels
Electrical system installation starts with a thorough upgrade of the home circuit panel. This confluence of wires and breakers is the literal heart and soul of home power supply. Not only must the wiring be of an appropriate gauge for safe conductance of power, but it must also be connected properly to the many conduits that carry electricity throughout the home.
Many older homes in Houston desperately need new wiring designs, new circuits, and upgraded wire itself in order to meet current fire codes and to deliver an appropriate supply of power to various home systems and major appliances.
Dedicated Panel Circuits
In most instances, larger homes contain very complex climate control systems and very expensive data and entertainment devices. Many appliances are also now very featuring rich, making their demands for power much higher than their counterparts in previous decades.
In order to ensure the safe and reliable operability of these devices, ILD technicians carefully examine the amperage and voltage requirements of each device, and, when necessary, run a dedicated circuit from the panel to the device. This ensures that the collective use of multiple devices will not overload the home’s electrical system. Installation of dedicated circuits guarantees that each device gets a steady supply of just the right amount of power.
Surge Suppressor Protection Systems
As effective as dedicated circuits are in maintaining continuous, steady current to individual home appliances, they cannot protect appliances against transient power surge. Transient power surge can destroy home appliances in a matter of seconds if enough high voltage suddenly spikes in the home circuit panel. Appliances today are more vulnerable to transient power surge because they all contain printed circuit boards similar to the ones found in computers. These boards are very sensitive to voltage spikes and can quickly burn out when one occurs. The only way to protect these delicate memory boards is to protect the home electrical system with the installation of specification-grade, commercial surge suppressors.
Surge suppressors are by no means inexpensive or something you can successfully self-install. However, they are better than insurance when it comes to protecting your investment in electrical system installation. Instead of covering the cost of repair after an appliance breaks (like insurance does), they keep the appliance from breaking in the first place.
Backup Home Emergency Electric Generators
No matter how protected a home is against power fluctuation and transient surge, no one can control what happens to the power grid itself in times like hurricanes, electrical emergencies, or brown outs resulting from malfunctioning transformers. A backup generator is a sure line of defense against total darkness and lifestyle paralysis. When professionally chosen and installed by experienced electricians who know how to match unit to the collective power requirements of the home, a backup generator will stand guard over your home in the event of power failure and prove itself an investment you will never regret making.
Illuminations Lighting Design
607 Durham Drive
Houston, Texas 77007
713-863-1133
Since 1980, ILD has grown to include a team of over 50 talented and dedicated employees. Specialty divisions have been created to focus on such disciplines as
lighting design,
electrical contracting,
landscape lighting and
home automation. Having specialists in each of these disciplines, while remaining true to the mission of offering home owners the "complete picture" of lighting design, is key to continued success at Illuminations Lighting.
We are located in
Houston Texas but provide lighting and
house lighting plans in
Austin TX, El Paso Texas,
San Antonio TX, College Station Texas,
Beaumont TX, Dallas Texas, Midland Tx and points beyond.
Labels: Electrical System Installations, Houston Electrical Panel Upgrades, Houston Residential Electrical Contractors, Residential Electricians
