3.7W LED Illuminating Entrance Monument

For example, in the mountains of Colorado where the only ambient lighting originates from the moon or perhaps the Milky Way, a low voltage quartz halogen (20W) or LED (3.7W) lighting fixture would be more than sufficient to illuminate a community entrance monument.

Glare from HPS Street Light

Conversely, trying to illuminate a commercial building or community entrance with low voltage lighting that faces a row of 250W high pressure sodium street lights, just would not be very effective. In this situation, a higher wattage ceramic metal halide or metal halide fixture must be used so that the building or monument is illuminated to at least the level of the ambient lighting, in order to effectively highlight them.

The best rule of thumb for any good energy efficient and aesthetic lighting design is to use only the amount of lighting needed – nothing less and nothing more. Lighting designers and lighting contractors love to sell lights, but the operative phrase should be Less Is More.

When you are designing a lighting system in the city, ambient lighting may originate from a streetlight across the street or from the overall sky glow that envelopes the entire region. There is nothing that a lighting designer can do about that, except for possibly encouraging the city to adopt more energy efficient and sky-friendly street lighting, etc. However, some glare-producing and inefficient lighting may be self inflicted by the property owners themselves – and lighting designers can certainly make recommendations to improve the overall effect of this lighting so that the new lighting design will not be ruined by the glare-producing ambient lighting.

For homeowners, the glare from offending light sources such as carriage lights can be mitigated by replacing the fixtures’ clear glass panels with frosted glass panels, by decreasing the wattage of the bulbs, and/or by dimming the bulbs. The same thing can be done with offending soffit lights by using lower wattage bulbs and/or by dimming them.

For commercial building owners, the overall lighting effect can be enhanced by ensuring that all lighting is directed only toward its intended focal plane; e.g., area lighting with full-cutoff (parking lot lighting and walkway lighting) directed downward only (no spillage horizontally); architectural lighting that is directed only toward the building with no glare produced in any other viewing plane.

The National Energy Education Development (NEED) project has determined that the percentage of energy consumption in the U.S. dedicated to lighting is roughly 11-percent for homes and 38-percent for schools and businesses. That’s a significant percentage, so by reducing unnecessary glare that contributes to unaesthetic ambient lighting – we can begin to make our nighttime environment more attractive as well as save energy.

Landscape Lighting Makes Outdoor Living Spaces Warm and Inviting

A recently published survey conducted by the American Society of Landscape Architects asked residential landscape architecture professionals to rank the relative popularity of a wide variety of design features to be included in outdoor living spaces in 2011.  Lighting was selected by 96.2% of the landscape architects, making it the most popular feature to be included in upcoming outdoor living projects. Ranked below lighting were fire pits/fireplaces, seating/dining areas, barbecue grills, and installed seating. Based on our experience, we know that most homeowners also need landscape lighting after dark to safely reach their outdoor firepits and seating areas, and to have adequate  lighting for both barbecuing and dining outdoors.

Landscape lighting not only makes your outdoor setting warm and inviting but it also allows you to enjoy your outdoor oasis from day into evening.

Garden path light with melting snow

With only 56 days until the first day of spring, I thought that it was worth mentioning that garden lighting looks great regardless of the season of the year. Most homeowners are afraid that garden lighting will make their yards look ugly during the non-growing seasons – but nothing can be further from the truth. Having grown up in Pennsylvania, I always loved seeing the deciduous trees and shrubs in winter because of the ever-changing beauty of both the branch structures and bark textures. The interplay of light and shadows that can be created by garden lighting is truly magnificent after a new snowfall, in the spring with flowering trees and shrubs, in the summer with trees and shrubs under full-leaf , and of course in the fall with multi-color leaves. Once the landscaping and the lighting have been installed, mother nature provides the ever-changing and exciting palette of colors and hues for a homeowner’s enjoyment.

Path Light after a Snow Storm

Garden lighting can be used to illuminate a pathway to reach a gazebo, a fire pit, or patio – or be used to illuminate a prized flower bed with colorful annual and/or perennial flowers. Sometimes a focal point of garden lighting will be a water feature, koi pond, or a piece of sculpture. And in Colorado, garden lighting helps to provide safety and security after dark for both young children and pets especially with the prevalence of coyotes, mountain lions, and bears.

Path Light – Summertime

With any good lighting design, the important thing is to not flood the area with light but to carefully highlight only the parts of the garden that are interesting aesthetically or are needed for safety – pathways, steps, etc. The lighting designer is basically an artist who is “painting” with light – and he or she with the homeowner’s input can choose to include anything on the blank lighting “canvas” in order to complete a compelling masterpiece that will be enjoyed for many years to come.

Garden lighting for gazebo, rock wall and trees.

In Colorado, homeowners love their rocks – character moss rocks, rock walls, massive red rock outcroppings, and huge granite boulders in the mountains. Hey – they don’t call this the Rocky Mountains for no good reason! Outdoor Lighting Perspectives (OLP) of Colorado has illuminated rocks and boulders of all sizes – and it helps to add three-dimensionality and interest to any garden lighting design.

The Colorado Garden and Home Show with over 400,000 square feet of exhibit space, 45,000 square feet of gardens, over 600 exhibitors from 25 states and Canada, and 60,000 attendees during the nine-day show is the largest home and garden show between the Mississippi River and the west coast.

Stay tuned for more information about the show and our exhibit and products.  We hope to see you there!

Christmas Lighting Made Easy

Outdoor Lighting Perspectives (OLP) of Colorado and OLP national have expanded its Christmas and holiday lighting services this year as reflected in our new corporate website. There you will see our emphasis on exterior lighting – residential, commercial, as well as  holiday.

Nighttime Simulation of Christmas Lighting Design

This concept is similar to our company’s concept of providing evening lighting demonstrations for our landscape and architectural lighting projects. This eliminates any guesswork and the customer actually gets to see what the lighting would look like prior to making a decision.  An example of what the actual Christmas lighting installation (in Castle Pines Village) looks like, can be seen below.

Enjoy the wonderful holiday season!

Christmas Lighting Installation in Castle Pines Village

Another View – Christmas Lighting in Castle Pines Village

     

Custom BBQ Light

One of the advantages of being part of a large national/international lighting company is our ability to craft and install custom low voltage landscape/architectural lighting fixtures for our clients when the need arises. Last week we did a project for a customer who asked during the installation if there was a way to illuminate his barbecue grill. The customer wanted the ability to turn the BBQ light on and off separately from the rest of the landscape lighting system. The other requirement was that the customer did not want the lighting fixture attached in any way to the fence.

Our factory manufactures the copper BBQ lighting fixture assemblies with the black rubber all-weather switch and bulb socket assemblies. Our crew modified the assembly by installing a slightly larger copper flood head and mounting it at a 45-degree angle. By using an additional length of copper as well as one of our company’s heavy-duty underground PVC anchoring stakes, we were able to install the entire assembly behind some ornamental grasses.

The copper once it develops a patina will blend in nicely with the surrounding vegetation and fencing. The design and installation of this BBQ lighting fixture pretty much summarizes the goal of Outdoor Lighting Perspectives – and that is to emphasize the overall lighting effect with functional, unobtrusive, and durable lighting fixtures.

Custom Lighting Fixture Next to BBQ

Solar Runway Lights for Cars?

One of the worst lighting design mistakes is the creation of runway lighting by lining each side of a driveway or walkway with lights. Some neighborhoods give the appearance that the homeowners are leaving the lights on for the return of Amelia Earhart!

The other evening I was walking Cody the Airedale and snapped these photos with my camera phone. It’s bad enough doing runway lighting with low voltage or line voltage lighting fixtures. It’s even worse when some of the current inexpensive and low-powered solar lights are used. In the photo above, the fixtures are literally two feet apart. We totally love the use of solar photovoltaic/LED lighting when it’s done properly – but these inefficient standalone solar lights are ripping off the unsuspecting homeowner.

Solar Lights Used on a Patio

One the right is a photo of a patio being under-illuminated by standalone solar lights. There’s a fairly large dropoff from the patio down to the lawn – so you can see that these lights will not provide the proper illumination for preventing falls especially if there’s a party.

The photo below illustrates the proper way to illuminate a walkway. As you can see, the path lights alternate from side to side along the walkway. The other thing you’ll notice with this design is that other lighting effects are used as well. Uplighting is used to illuminate the columns of the pergola as well as the trees. This keeps the lighting effect appearing fresh and interesting and not monotonous – the way it would look if you just did path lighting.

Proper Use of Path Lights along Walkway

Mama bear at outdoor lighting installation

Mama bear and baby bear at outdoor lighting installation

OLP is doing the same thing with its Commercial Lighting Division with the launch of its new commercial lighting website. Standard products can literally take only days to obtain (slightly longer for custom powder-coated versions). Just as is the case with all of our lighting designs and installations on the residential side, the emphasis on commercial lighting is also with quality design and lighting effect. OLP offers a complete turnkey operation – from design, installation, and on-going service.

OLP’s commercial lighting division emphasizes the latest in green-energy technology from low voltage quartz halogen/LED to line voltage Ceramic Metal Halide and Induction Fluorescents. In other words, we use just the right wattage bulb to do the job – but not one watt more than we need to!

To read the full press release from PR Web click here.