The new blog 3947

What permanent outdoor lighting means Permanent outdoor lighting is an LED system mounted along a building's rooflines, eaves and edges and left up all year. Where temporary strands come and go, this stays. The LEDs sit inside a channel matched to the color of your trim or fascia, which is the reason it does not read as decoration during the day. Where it goes on a property Most designs start at the roofline, then gables, dormers, columns and porch edges follow. Businesses

Start at the top edge Look at any house after dark and the shape you recognize is the roofline. It is the longest continuous line on the building, and it sits against the sky, so it has contrast working for it. Put light on it and the outline comes back, which is most of what people mean when they say a house looks good lit.Which is why almost every permanent lighting system starts at that line rather than anywhere else on the building. It is the highest impact run on the b

Accent lighting is a choice about what to leave dark Most outdoor lighting is trying to cover ground. Accent lighting asks which one thing should be looked at. It is not coverage. Point it at one tree, one column, one entry and leave the rest alone. The dark part is not an oversight. It is the reason the lit thing stands out.The concept takes one sentence and a lot of discipline. Choose a small number of things and light nothing else. Every plan gets pressure to grow, and t

Why it has to be LED Anything mounted permanently on a roof edge has to survive being there. That rules out most of what people picture when they hear Christmas lights. The case for LED is heat, power draw and durability, in that order.None of this means you need to understand electronics. It is a reason to ask what is actually going on your house, and to expect a specific answer rather than a brochure line. The people who can walk you through it are generally the ones doin

The case for handing it off Hanging Christmas lights is fine right up until the second story. Add the steep pitch, gutters you would rather not lean on, and the fact that December in the Upstate can be wet, and the math changes. The parts of the job A full Christmas light installation is more than a crew showing up with your old strands. It starts with a design for the house: what gets outlined, which trees get wrapped, how it looks from the road. Then installation, which

Landscape lighting is a design problem before it is a shopping problem Landscape lighting puts light on the ground level of a property: walkways, beds, trees, steps, driveways, the path from the car to the door. The goal is to see the tree, not the light pointed at it. Done badly, you get a line of glowing dots along the path and not much else. The pieces of a plan Most plans start with the path to the door, because that is the part you use whether or not anybody is lookin

Step one is a free consultation The first step is a free consultation, not a truck in the driveway. That visit covers the roofline, the gables, the porch and anything else worth lighting. It costs nothing, and you are not signing anything to have it. Why the design comes first Your house is not the same shape as the one down the street, so the plan gets drawn for it. The design should work with the house, following the roof edge, the gables and the entry. On commercial wor

Landscape lighting is a design problem before it is a shopping problem Landscape lighting puts light on the ground level of a property: paths, plantings, trees, steps and the walk up to the front door. The goal is to see the tree, not the light pointed at it. Done badly, you get a line of glowing dots along the path and not much else. What a yard normally needs Path lighting is usually the starting point, because it is the part that does a job every night. Uplighting on th