Professional outdoor landscape lighting is not cheap, and Cheap outdoor landscape lighting is not good.
I work with an interior designer who says “Do it right and you only cry once”. My outdoor lighting designs include seeing the effects not the light source.I work with many different types of fixtures, lamps,color temperatures,filters and shields. Along with Professional lighting that lasts a very long time.
Maintenance is a must,I can’t tell you how many old installs I get called to look at where a fixture or cable has grown into a tree.Old wires and bad connections that do no longer provide proper voltage to the lights. Here are a few Horror story pictures.
old transformer a landscaper tried to fix with ducttape
old cheap lighting we took out and replaced
This fixture is like an aluminum beer can and most split up the middle,this system was supposedly professionally installed and was only 3 years old
cheap light fixture that can’t hardly be relamped
what happens to your wiring if connectors are not properly connected
Cheap path light I took out and redid the entire lighting system
Have you ever driven through a neighborhood at night and looked around at the houses? Some of them are completely dark. Some of them may have on a porch light or even a few solar powered garden lights. But the houses that really stand out are the ones with professional outdoor lighting. You can tell these houses by the way they stand out without looking like a light show. Instead, a house with great outdoor landscape lighting will look natural. Its architectural features and beautiful landscaping will be lit just enough to show off their beauty. Did you ever wonder how that happens? It’s the result of proper planning and professional installation.
Why Spend Money On Landscape Lighting
Some people may wonder why they need outdoor landscape lighting. It may seem that they have all they need with a porch light to signal to people that they are home. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Look around at some of the more upscale neighborhoods and what you’ll see if lots of high-quality outdoor lighting. And there’s a reason for that. Outdoor landscape lighting serves many purposes. We’ll present here the BEST reasons to install outdoor landscape lighting right here.
1. Curb Appeal
They say that you only get one chance to make a first impression. At a business meeting that might mean you have to dress right, look good, and speak well. But for your home, we call that first impression curb appeal. The “curb” in curb appeal means that you don’t have much time to make that first lasting impression. Before someone has even stepped onto your property, they have made up their mind about your house. In fact, many homebuyers have already decided on whether they are interested in a house before they walk in the front door.
There are lots of things you can do to increase curb appeal. A nice fresh coat of paint, some landscape design, and even just sparkling clean windows go a long way toward making a good first impression. But all of that becomes irrelevant at night. That is unless you have high-quality outdoor lighting.
The goal of outdoor lighting is to highlight all of the best features of your house and landscape without looking like a light show. To do that, careful planning and professional experience go a long way.Lite Visions landscape lighting comes from many years in the concert and theatrical lighting industry and that makes us one of the most experienced landscape lighting professionals you will ever meet. Our attention to detail and distinctive design approach will leave your house looking like a beautiful resort.
They pride themselves on excellent customer service, quality materials, and top-notch installation.
2. Security
Many homeowners suffer from optimism bias. That’s just a fancy way of saying that they think they are less likely to suffer a negative event compared to others. Of course, that’s not how statistics work. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 3.7 million household burglaries occur each year. And in case you thought you could be the exception, they also report that 88% of those burglaries are residential, mostly occurring in privately owned, single unit homes. The sad truth is that there is little reason to believe that you are immune to the risk of unwanted visitors to your home.
However, there is a way to significantly decrease your chances of burglary.
Escaping burglars is kind of like the old joke about escaping a bear. You don’t have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than everyone else. Burglars will go after the easiest targets. Making your home even a little more secure will drive unwanted intruders to an easier target.
One way to make your house less desirable as a burglary target is to install some security lighting. One typical type of security lighting is motion-sensor controlled lights in the front and back of your house. For instance, a single bright floodlight by your driveway, attached to a motion sensor, can be a huge deterrent. Any burglar that is suddenly caught in a brightly live driveway will quickly disappear to a darker target. The same is true of lighting up back porches or yards. A single bright floodlight can do the trick. However, floodlights are not the only solution.
Having your house and landscaping tastefully lit throughout the night can make it hard for an intruder to approach your home unnoticed. One of the most common hiding places for a burglar as they approach is in the shadow of trees. If you light up your trees with some subtle uplighting, you will both create a beautiful landscape feature and deprive burglars of a useful hiding spot at the same time. If your home is built near an area of dense brush or trees, this can be especially important.
Most burglaries are actually committed by intruders who enter through a first-floor doorway or window. So lighting up these areas on your home should be a top priority.
3. Making Your Outdoor Spaces Usable at Night
The third reason to install outdoor lighting on your home is to make your outdoor spaces usable at night. If you have a garden patio, grill area, deck, or any other useful space, there’s no reason it should be less useful at night. These days, outdoor living space is one of the most popular additions to a home. Here in Raleigh NC, where the weather is mild much of the year, adding outdoor lighting to these areas can dramatically increase the usable living area of your home.
If you have a deck, walkway, or any type of steps or stairs, it is vital that you light it up. This is as much for safety as recreation.
Pathway lighting is an essential part of any outdoor lighting scheme. Many homeowners install simple solar lights in parallel rows along either side of a pathway. While this may provide some light and help avoid trips and falls, it is far from ideal. Solar lights are rarely bright enough to light a pathway adequately. They are also usually cheap and easily breakable. Finally, installing your lights in parallel rows is aesthetically a poor choice.
Again this is the best reason to hire an outdoor lighting professional who will tastefully use a combination of lights that will create a soft warm glow as well as creating safety along pathways and outdoor areas with out creating an airport runway effect.
Reliable Outdoor and Landscape Lighting
From lighting design to low-voltage installation, professionals such as Lite Visions landscape lighting do it best along with having the best warranties along with service and maintenance.
EXHIBITOR SPOTLIGHT: LITE VISIONS LANDSCAPE LIGHTING INC.
copied from a home show blog we did earlier this season
We’re excited to have Lite Visions Landscape Lighting join us at the Fairgrounds Southern Ideal Home Show. Lite Visions Lighting Designer Joe, went from lighting up the stars to lighting under the stars with his outdoor lighting, architectural lighting and landscape lighting design firm Lite Visions. Lite Visions landscape lighting is located in Raleigh NC and currently services the following areas: Apex, Cary, Chapel Hill, Clayton, Durham, Fuquay Varina, Garner, Goldsboro, Holly Springs, Knightdale, Morrisville, Raleigh, Smithfield, Wake Forest and Zebulon. Lite Visions is not a lighting franchise, which anyone can purchase. Lite Visions is locally owned lighting design and installation company. They pride themselves in delivering the best LED Outdoor Fixture, workmanship and customer service to our clients in Raleigh and the surrounding areas. We do custom outdoor lighting to both residential and commercial properties.
Before seeing the team at booth #2347, get to know more about them in our brief interview below.
Describe your products and services.From Lighting the Stars to Lighting Under The Stars: Lite Visions Owner and Raleigh Native, Joe went from working with Concert acts Whitney Houston, Tim Mcgraw and Alan Jackson to the Christmas Sensation The Trans Siberian Orchestra as a Lighting Technician and Lighting Designer. Joe is now designing and installing unique outdoor and architectural lighting in the NC area. We also update older outdoor lighting systems. Please see our 5 star reviews on google.
What is your best home or garden tip for the season? If you are considering outdoor lighting, please make sure the person you use knows what they are doing. I see jobs where the job looks cheap due to the fact someone put lights under the windows of the home instead of lighting up the architecture of the home. Or they installed a transformer in plain sight of the front of the home. A number of people install lights, that does not mean they are lighting designers. I paint pictures with light.
What are your featured deals this season? I work with companies who offer the best products and warranty available in the professional outdoor lighting industry. I stand behind my installations and get many referrals because of that.
What are your home and garden pet peeves? Seeing a BAD lighting job when I drive out of a neighborhood in the evening knowing some homeowner paid good money for that job and does not know the difference. We are not a lighting franchise that can be sold to anyone wanting to open a franchise business. We do not sell or install inferior products just to make a profit. All of our products have the best professional warranty available to the lighting professional. As a lighting designer. I want to walk into a home and see what the owner’s view is outside to paint a beautiful picture with lighting that they can view. Some installers just put up a few lights that people riding by the home can see, that is not a lighting design. But what their franchise told them to sell as a package. Some companies stick lights in the ground and never come back to see how they look at night.
What is the strangest client request you’ve ever received? To light a big tree in a front yard that I would not have chosen to light, the couples son had recently passed away and he had planted that tree for his mom. When I heard that story I lit that tree for no charge.
What is your favorite part of the home show? Meeting and making friends from all walks of life and hearing the ohhs and ahhs from them the first time we turn their new lighting on. I recently did a lighting design and spent alot of time with the client over several evenings. He was so in awe of what the initial lighting looked like that we installed more lighting and he was like a kid with a new toy. I am passionate about my lighting designs.
Any additional information you’d like people to know? Professional outdoor landscape lighting is not cheap, I work with an interior designer who says “Do it right and you only cry once”. My designs include seeing the effects not the light source.I work with many different types of fixtures, lamps,color temperatures,filters and shields. Maintenance is a must,I can’t tell you how many old installs I get called to look at where a fixture or cable has grown into a tree.
The Fairgrounds Southern Ideal Home Show is taking over the North Carolina State Fairgrounds April 5-7, 2019. Don’t have your tickets yet? Buy online and save $2!
APRIL 5-7, 2019 NORTH CAROLINA STATE FAIRGROUNDS
creating a nighttime backdrop with professional outdoor lighting
As a professional lighting designer I think of myself as creating a portrait with my outdoor lighting designs using light as my brush and my client’s home and property as my canvas with the end results looking like a beautiful resort with it’s breathtaking views at night after the sun sets.
I recently had a property owner contact me to see if I could work off their landscape architects plans for their landscape lighting. The first thing I noticed was the trees not lit up properly and too many obtrusive path lighting fixtures. We met and walked the property in person and came up with a plan that would be the icing on the cake of their renovations. After getting the landscaping in and their outdoor patio furniture and fire table I was able to see their views from the seating areas and came up with a plan completely different from the landscape architects for their outdoor landscape lighting. This is the view when walking in the backyard gate. These stunning lighting fixtures are works of art as well as throwing off beautiful shadows across and onto the walk in.
In this patio area I felt it was important for the to use the beautiful fence as a backdrop for the outdoor landscape lighting with the new trees and water features throwing soft shadows all along the fence ,but keeping the seating and fire table area out of any direct lighting.
Outdoor landscape lighting design is being able to visualize something that others can’t see.
Getting a professional outdoor landscape lighting design is better than doing it yourself for a several important reasons. Of course, as a landscape lighting company we may seem a bit biased. But Lite Visions is extremely proud of the work we do here, and we love it! So we put together a few benefits our customers love from our lighting services. We hope you enjoy!
Savings
You save a few different things by hiring Lite Visions for your professional landscape lighting. The first thing you save is money. We know, that sounds crazy. Most of the time when you buy lights yourself you do not get the best quality lights that last. So you wind up spending more money on replacing them when with us you would never spend money on light replacements. Gotta love our warranty! Improper setup of your lights can also cause them to not last as long.
Time is another factor. Landscape lighting is a project. It’s not like buying a new tire for your car, which some people still outsource. Unless you happen to have experience in this field you are going to have to do research to figure out how to set everything up. How hard could it be? Well, there are some things you need to know about wiring like how much for different lights voltage drop etc. You’ll need to know how big of a transformer to buy in order to power all your lights as well as how to check amps and wiring loads. We could go on, but the point is you save a lot of time by hiring Lite Visions landscape lighting company, and you actually get to enjoy the experience of lighting your beautiful home and property.
The last thing you save on is tiresome rearranging of your lights. Lite visions is a professional landscape lighting designer. That means we figure out exactly what you want, give you our advice on opportunities we see at your home, and execute so you never have to worry about it again. You won’t want to rearrange your lights as much, because you’ll know Lite visions got it right the first time.
Quality
Professional outdoor landscape lighting is Lite visions business. It is what we do. When you work with us, you get the best quality landscape lighting products and designs for your home. We know what works and what does not work. Our designer may have ideas after seeing your home that you haven’t even thought of yet. We have done this at a lot of homes,even with an architect’s drawing, so we seldom run into situations that we have not already seen before.
Property Value
In addition to improving how your home looks, it also increases your property value . The obvious one is that it will help you sell your home if that time ever comes. The second reason is that people will think your home looks much better if it has professional outdoor landscape lighting. So, not only is your home more valuable after a professional outdoor lighting job, but its curb appeal also shines.
Get What You Want
Have you ever tried to put something together and it didn’t quite look right? That’s how things sometimes turn out when you do landscape lighting yourself. Why is that? We believe it is because there is an art to what we do. We paint your landscape with light. There is also a science to it. Like we said before, we have done this before and we know what works and what doesn’t. When you sign up with us, we work with you to find out exactly what you are looking for and make sure you get exactly what you want. That’s part of what makes Lite Visions professional outdoor landscape lighting professional.
October: October is halfway thru the month and it is getting dark earlier and earlier.
Every evening I am surprised at how early the sun goes down.
And these shorter days and longer nights lead to a big huge home security concern: lighting.
Seems every October we get more calls about outdoor lighting than last year because of the early darker evenings as people become concerned about getting home after it is already dark. The best remedy for this is outdoor lighting that works from dusk to dawn so you do not have to drive up to a dark home.
Lighting serves an important role in two different ways to help keep your home safe:
1) Inside, it deters burglars by giving the impression that someone is home.
2)  Outside, it deters burglars by taking away hiding spots in the darkness.
Lite Visions will check for safety hazards. Check the lighting on stairs and walkways in particular. Are there any dark spots that would be safer with lighting? Is your yard clearly lit for any visitors who aren’t familiar with any hazards like your family may be? Can someone easily find their way from the garage to the house in the dark? Lite Visions will help find these areas and make plans to make it safer.
Call Lite Visions today for more information about your personalized outdoor lighting system to keep your home and family safe.
Coming from a lighting background for in concert and live theatre, Lite Visions will use many of those dramatic lighting effects to help transform your backyard outdoor living area into a personalized oasis for you to enjoy into the evening hours.
Now enjoy the space you spent money on creating and landscaping with your personalized outdoor lighting. Distinctive and soft outdoor lighting will help create a space that you will not want to leave.
Call Lite Visions today to create your dream space.
My decision to open an outdoor lighting design firm came naturally to me,coming from a concert lighting design background for many years.
I worked with bands from local area bands to arena acts from Kool and the Gang, to Whitney Houston to Tim Mcgraw, Alan Jackson and many more concert acts to the Christmas sensation the Trans Siberian Orchestra as a lighting technician.
a few memories from my many years of touring in the music industry
As a lighting design professional we take pride in painting a scene with our outdoor lighting designs.
Here are a few photos from nighttime outdoor lighting installs where we created a backdrop to the property in the evening as well as outlining the changes in elevation with beautiful outdoor landscape lighting.
This outdoor lighting will not only create safety and security for the homeowner, but will also give them some nice soft outdoor lighting to be able to enjoy sitting out in the backyard into the evening hours without having the floodlights light up the yard too brightly.
Call Us Today 919-518-9950 to see your yard and home in a whole new light.
Light Visions Outdoor Lighting and Landscape Lighting Raleigh NC
Security lighting should provide security by discouraging trespassers. A well-lit home is less likely to be broken into.
Outdoor landscape lighting adds beauty and dimension to a home. Lighting is also an integral part of an effective home security system. Outdoor security lighting discourages would-be intruders from targeting your home by increasing the risk of being caught. The best lighting design allows physical detection and facial recognition minimizes hiding spots and increases your sense of safety.
You don’t have to light your home like a football field to feel safe. Over-illumination with floodlights pointed all over can draw unwanted attention to valuable items in your home or business and can cause light pollution. In this guide, we offer an overview of security lighting and simple tips to help you identify potential safety and security risks, select the best security lights, and determine their placement to ensure your safety and security.
A 2007 Washington Post article found burglars search for homes that appear to be unoccupied. Lighting adds an element of surprise and establishes an occupancy pattern that deters intruders from targeting a home in the first place. Residents that use outdoor lighting as part of their security plan significantly decrease their chances of being burglarized.
The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) further explains that good security lighting anticipates potential threats and predators, and increases the means necessary to commit a crime, discouraging would-be criminals from breaking into a home. This security approach is known as target hardening. In other words, the longer it takes to plan and execute a break in, the less likely criminals are to target that home. According to the IES, home security lighting must have the following aims:
Provide a clear view of the area; including people and objects such as fences, walls and barriers
Allow facial recognition at a minimum distance of 30 feet
Make tasks such as finding your keys, retrieving the mail, or walking the dog easier and safer
Help people avoid criminal threats and/or defend themselves when a threat is perceived
Enhance your sense of safety when spending time outdoors
Call us Today 919-518-9950 Lite Visions Outdoor Lighting and Landscape Lighting Professionals Raleigh NC
