“Use it as a high-profit addition,”
Pelletier says. “You can mark it up sig- nificantly and generally the install times are pretty short.”
LANDSCAPE LIGHTING DESIGN CONCEPTS While landscape lighting is not too difficult to sell, it does come with the challenge of having to be installed during the day but the full effect can only be seen at night. “It definitely can be a challenge but to alleviate this issue, we provide our clients with a free 48-hour lighting demo so they will have the time to feel the full effect of what an outdoor light- ing package will look like at their home before they purchase it,” Nebel says. “We install lighting anytime and will make adjustments as needed, particu- larly for uplights and floodlights.” Williams says you cannot fully adjust the lights in the daytime and know that there are no hot spots in the system. Hot spots occur when you’re not wash- ing or grazing properly. “There are some tricks that you can use like you can use a green laser on the end of a light and shoot it,” Williams says. “That laser will show you where it’s going to project, but nothing beats going back out at dusk and fine-tuning those light fixtures just so you could avoid hot spots.”
Light color temperature is another aspect you have to consider. Pelletier says they tend to stick to warmer light colors for their designs. He says cooler lights can be used in more modern or more commercial settings, but he’s never had a client request cooler lights. Williams says the best light color temperature depends on what plant material or surface you’re lighting. “For the more modern look, where you’ve got your light stones, we usually go with a 3,000 Kelvin,” Williams says. “When you’re doing more greenery plant material like your holly, your cypresses, you want to stick to 2,700 K because it’s a warmer temperature or if you’re lighting a brick surface or something with red.” There are numerous lighting tech- niques, but the site will determine if some are possible. “If you’ve got a water feature and you light through it, you can get some pretty amazing dramatic ripple effects on the hardscape at night,” Pelletier says. Some of Williams’ preferred land-
scape lighting techniques are moon- lighting and hanging lanterns from trees.
“Moonlighting is absolutely amazing,”
Williams says. “It’s hard to do properly because if you’re not 20 to 30 feet in the tree moonlighting down then you’re actually blinding people because that light can be so bright.” Williams encourages landscapers to get creative with the lighting design and figure out how to illuminate a space without having a downlight create a hot spot.
“One of the biggest mistakes I see with lighting design is path lights and I was there with my company in begin- ning,” Williams says. “We would throw in a billion path lights. Every five feet there’d be a path light, and it literally just looked like an airport in those front yards.”
BEST PRACTICES If you’re installing landscape lighting
in an existing landscape, Pelletier says it’s fairly low-impact so there’s typically not an issue with damaging the space. Williams says it comes down to where the trenches are going and how you’re trenching. “We like to do a garden refresh, if you
will,” Williams says. “If we’re doing their beds, then we’ll pull out the mulch. We’ll start from scratch. Hopefully, they don’t have annuals and sometimes they do so we just have to work behind them. It’s just being very careful.” Williams encourages other landscap- ers to get with the manufacturer to learn how to install the lights properly to avoid callbacks. He says most callbacks are going to be caused by connections and how you laid the wire. Pelletier sug- gests trying a small install at your own house to get a feel for the work. Williams says some of the common mistakes that occur when installing landscape lighting include putting wires directly in the ground, not in a conduit,
and using indoor wire nuts. “I’ve seen electrical tape, I’ve seen them not even use any kind of tape and they just twist the wires together,” Williams says. “Voltage drop doesn’t happen as much with LED lights but I still see it occasionally where they have run from a transformer that’s too far out and they’ve got too many lines pulling off that one run so their lights are not all the same luminance.” One main mistake Pelletier says to avoid is buying low-budget products at Lowe’s or Home Depot because they do not last. He advises buying a quality product that has a warranty. “Use quality products and don’t cut corners on the installation, especially when it comes to your wiring connec- tions!” Nebel says. “Be open to visiting your clients at night so you can fine- tune the placements in a way that you couldn’t do during the day.” “Look at it as a real opportunity to enhance your designs and make the landscape really pop,” Pelletier says. “It can make a huge difference in a good design, to see it with that light at night. I would also say have a good photographer and get some photog- raphy of your best projects done with the lighting on at night because it’s just such a dramatic effect. For a marketing tool, it’s a great addition to have those pictures in your portfolio or on your website.” TLP
Landscape lighting extends the hours a client can enjoy their
outdoor space. Photos: GreenPro, LLC
National Association of Landscape Professionals 21
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