Your yard and landscape are just as much a part of your home as your house, so planning your landscape lighting should be done with as much care as you have taken to light your home’s interior. Covered patios and porches, and outdoor entertaining areas may need indoor lighting techniques such as recessed down lights and wall box dimmer controls that allow you to adjust light levels, show off the structure, and make your home a lighting gallery. Setting the tone between the threshold of your home lighting plan and your outdoor lights in such a manner will establish the conceptual and emotional foundation of your design plan that will then extend into the green, open landscape of your yard.
You should develop a landscape lighting plan that uses a combination of light and shadows.
Homeowners often mistakenly think that shadows are a bad thing when planning a lighting design. They believe the purpose of lighting is to get rid of all the dark spots in an area. The opposite is really true. Landscape lights best used to create a healthy balance between light and shadow. Depending on the degree to which you vary the contrast of these two elements, you can create all sorts of luminary effects and differing states of mind. Bathing dark places in your yard in soft ambient lighting mimics the effects of moonlight and is highly romantic. Outdoor path lighting provides a visual aid to trip hazards and other obstacles in the garden. Up lighting ornamental statuary and structures will help create an elevated sense of emotion apropos to outdoor parties. Hidden lighting inside shrubbery and flower beds will create a mystical effect where objects seem to glow with a light of their own. How you plan your outdoor garden lighting will really depend in the end on how you plan to feel when you look out of your window at night, or entertain family and guests outdoors. Begin by evaluating plant materials, flower beds, trees, and gardens. These are elements that create shadow, and they make for excellent guidelines to follow when laying down the basics of an outdoor custom home lighting system.
Think of layering the light when you are developing a plan for illuminating your landscape.
ILD landscaping lighting professionals recommend four distinctive layers of luminance, some of which will distinctly overlap one another; and others of which will blend and synthesize together. Every landscape lighting design is different and has to be planned around the unique dimensions of a yard and its contents. Fountains, sculptures, rock formations, bridges, and ornamental structures provide ideal accent and feature lighting opportunities. Tree lighting with mercury vapor tree lights creates pools of artificial moonlight, and is a favorite design theme among ILD clientele. Depending on the overall mood you wish to create, any number of light fixtures types can be used to light these objects. You may want to install fixtures that are completely hidden and only illuminate objects of interest, or you may go the other route and use highly visible, decorative lights that add an additional aesthetic to your yard. If you are unsure of what type of fixtures to use, call an outdoor lighting contractor like Illuminations Lighting Design and request a consultation with one of our professionals who can explain the benefits of specialty commercial grade fixtures made especially for what you have in mind.
Illuminations Lighting Design is the only "One Stop" destination for lighting design, engineering, landscape lighting services and installation in the state of Texas, and remains unrivaled by any lighting firm in the United States for lighting that is art. As homes grow larger and needs become more complex, having a single resource provides home owners with peace of mind. This translates into a smoother process, reduced costs and a better product.
Where is your landscape lighting design studio located?
We are located in the heart of Houston just west of Downtown at the corner of Durham Drive and Blossom Street, which is located between Memorial Drive and Washington Avenue in the Rice Military Subdivision.Although we are located in Houston Texas we 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.
Call us today at 713-863-1133 or 800-863-1184, visit our lighting blog or request a consultation online using our contact us form.
Labels: Austin Landscape Lighting, Houston Electrical Contractors, Landscape Lighting Consultants, Landscape Lighting Professional, Landscape Outdoor Lighting, Planning Landscape Lighting
Tree lighting is one of the most superb forms of lighting design. Any landscape with large enough trees will be enhanced by this highly sophisticated and innovative lighting technique. Tree lighting is done by concealing mercury vapor lights in the higher branches of the tree where they cannot be seen by viewers on the ground. Mercury vapor lights give off a blue-white light very similar to moonlight that filters through the leaves and branches and rains down onto the ground. Tree lighting’s close approximation to natural moonlight adds a romantic, almost mystical element to a place, and contributes to a feeling of time being suspended under the ambient radiance of the trees.
Illuminations Lighting and Design has worked for many years as an outdoor tree lighting and landscape lighting design firm. Over the years we have developed a number of strategies for using tree lights in almost any commercial, municipal, or residential environment to create specific benefits for a wide variety of clientele.
Municipal Parks
Tree lighting is an essential component of outdoor park lighting. Parks are special places people seek out to escape the pressure and mediocrity of the mundane world. Parks help ground and center the mind in the energies of Nature and release the stress that accumulates within the self during after prolonged activity in offices and industrial environments. It is very important that a public park visited at night be sufficiently lit to provide clear visibility for walking, conversation, and safety. As a close approximation to natural moonlight, tree lighting extends the romantic and sentimental nature of the moon itself into the general landscape. Benches located beneath tree lights or other commercial outdoor lighting are excellent places to have a meaningful conversation with a significant other, and they are much safer as well.
Academic Institutions
The architecture and landscapes of academic institutions often suggests Old World and Classical Motifs. Although America is a young country and its academies nowhere nearly as old as those of Europe, larger trees help add a sense of antiquity to these institutions because they are obviously older, and contribute greatly to the university’s image as a place of established learning and credibility. Tree lighting is needed on college and university campuses because many trees grow outward as well as up as they age. Simple up lights installed near the trunk of a tree will not adequately light its branches and leaves. Tree lights, on the other hand, can be positioned in key locations throughout the lower branches and upper canopy, creating a sublime and stately presence for students and faculty to enjoy and admire throughout the night.
Commercial Properties
Tree lights will also create a feeling of established presence for a corporate landscape. A brand new company surrounded by a canopy of mature trees will look older than it really is, and possibly gain a competitive advantage in a marketplace that often emphasizes experience over talent a bit too much. They are vital to commercial security lighting, too, because of the fact that shadows under trees allow vandals and burglars too much room to maneuver in secret.
Tree lighting helps emphasize a company’s dedication to environmental concerns. As more and more companies seek to enhance their public image by either going green or supporting green initiatives, illuminating trees around the building helps harmonize the architecture with Nature.
Hospitality Industries
All major hospitality industries depend greatly on resort tree lighting in their outdoor landscape design. Landscapes around hotels, resorts, country clubs, and five star restaurants contribute to a feeling of refined escape and elegance. Country club diners look out of clubhouse windows onto landscapes that appear sublime and timeless under the surreal ambiance of tree lighting. Guests at warm weather resorts can enjoy the site of palm trees from their window throughout the night, and hotels with tree lighting create the illusion of both a larger edifice and a more remote getaway from the pressures of life.
Tree lighting, however, does a great deal more for hospitality industries than provide decoration. These lights can actually contribute significantly to general outdoor garden lighting in a number of ways. Many resorts host events at night on a pavilion or stage under lighted trees. The illumination from the mercury lights provides an exotic compliment to general lighting that improves visibility without diminishing the feeling of escape and altered reality that a vacation is supposed to create. Golfers who play at night will especially appreciate the additional lighting under trees for those shots that are hard to make under moonlight alone. Restaurant diners who prefer the patio also will enjoy the added general lighting that comes down from the trees and fills the spaces between tables with a warm glow.
Custom Homes
Custom very often to have high fences and ornamental, gated entrances that open into a long winding drive leading up to the house. Trees that grow along these driveways sometimes arch over the pavement and mesh together into a canopy. Placing lights in these trees creates a sense of removal from the rest of the neighborhood, and the feeling that you are entering an estate and not just another home.
Tree lights also play an important role in home-based entertainment. Trees that overhand a patio can create an aura of accent lighting around the patio itself, and tree lights installed above flower beds and gardens provide a layer of ambient down light that overlaps the garden and path lights installed within the foliage itself.
Twenty Seven Years of Service Experience
These brief summaries provide a quick visual of just a few of the many things we can do with tree lights as part of our larger services in landscape lighting design and commercial exterior lighting. Our multi-specialization in five major disciplines has won us many a number of awards and established us as a leader in the design industry throughout Texas. Illuminations Lighting Design specializes in art lighting, advanced electrical wiring, lighting design, and home automation.
Where are your main offices?
We 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. Call us today at 713-863-1133, visit our lighting blog or request a consultation online using our contact us form.Labels: Hospitality Lighting Central Texas, Hospitality Lighting Houston, Landscape Lighting Consultants, Landscape Lighting Professional, Landscape Outdoor Lighting, Tree Lighting
Houstonian's often assume that because a large number of nationwide, branded retailers offer enormous selections of exterior lighting fixtures for houses, yard decorations, and landscaping fixtures that they can save money by purchasing attractive fixtures and performing their own installations. This never pays off in the long run because retail-grade outdoor light fixtures are not built to withstand the elements, require lighting maintenance and they are also more difficult to connect to automated lighting controls like Lutron Radio Ra.
A professional lighting design company like Illuminations Lighting and Design carefully studies your home and surrounding property and spends extensive time consulting with you to in order to learn the many particulars of your personal lifestyle. Outdoor lights are chosen that will accent and magnify your home environment on an intensely personal level, and careful attention is paid to a number of very important factors that only a trained consultant can properly assess to develop a system of outdoor lights and lighting controls.
Theme and Style
The theme and style of residential lighting reflects your personal tastes, the physical style of your home architecture, the sizes and styles of the homes in your neighborhood, and even the geography in which you are located.
Houses in River Oaks often look like stately old-world mansions like fine art. Homes near Memorial often reflect early American or colonial architecture, whereas many two story houses in Bellaire feature of blend of traditional architecture and eclectic customization.
These architectural keynotes have to be considered when choosing architectural light fixtures in order to build a system with complimentary aesthetic. ILD professionals work to enhance the architecture and location of a home, never diminish it, with the physical style and size of the outdoor light fixtures we install.
Architectural and Whole House Lighting
Many outdoor lights have been specifically engineered to easily mount to the exterior of the house itself. Knowing where to put them, however, presents the greatest challenge to the home lighting installer. If the lighting angles are not calculated accurately, house lights will cause light pollution and glare that overwhelm the architecture and spill into neighboring yards and windows. Outdoor lighting contractors such as ILD are trained in special installation methods that enable them to install outdoor lights from concealed positions that place just enough light on the house without casting shadows or shining light into the house next door.
These trade skills prove extremely valuable in Houston suburbs such as Pearland, The Woodlands, and Sugar Land where families often have early bed times due to the need to get up early for long commutes and getting young children to school on time.
Landscape Lights
Outdoor light systems can be configured in such a way as to unite Nature and human architecture into a blended whole. Special outdoor tree lights, path lights, garden, and step lights can be installed along an illuminated network of natural vantage points that in turn serve as points of aesthetic definition and function as practical anchors for critical fixtures, transformers, and landscape lighting accessories necessary to linking system components together.
ILD is one of the few residential landscape lighting contractors that uses only environmentally-friendly outdoor lights and installs them using special techniques that protect trees from scarring and ensure their future growth.
In Royal Oaks, these techniques have worked hand in glove with special deed restrictions landscape and whole house lights in lieu of prohibited streetlights.
Deck and Patio Outdoor Lights
As homeowners cut personal fuel costs and increasingly entertain at home, deck lights, garden and patio lights have risen in popularity throughout Houston neighborhoods such as Spring Valley, Hedwig Village, West University, and Rice Village.
Decks and patios can be lit with minimal power costs by using a combination of led lights and lighting controls, making it possible to have cool-burning lights left on throughout the night into the wee hours of the morning.
Security Lights and Alarm System Integration
ILD professionals will make even the most powerful, High Intensity Discharge security lights cost effective by linking them to lighting controls and motion sensors that only turn the main floodlights on if human body movements are detected.
Perimeter lighting can be done by using a variety of low voltage lighting fixtures that keep shadows away from the corners of the house and yard.
We will also connect your security lights to your existing alarm system, and we can install manual controls that will enable you to instantly turn on every indoor and outdoor light in the event of suspicious activity or impending home invasion.
Working with the experienced professionals at Illuminations Lighting Design combines the value of commercial grade outdoor light fixtures and the advanced design and electrical skills of one of Houston’s premier electrical and design service firms. We offer landscape lighting maintenance agreements to keep your system in tip top condition.
Contact us today Toll-Free at 1-800-863-1184 for a free consultation. We 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: Beaumont Fine Art Lighting, Beaumont Home Automation, Houston Electrical Contractor, Landscape Lighting Consultants, Outdoor Architectural Lighting, Professional Landscape Lighting
