Outdoor Lighting for Rochester, NY Landscapes!
As the day comes to an end, your beautiful home and landscape can still be admired through the night!
At Rochester Landscape Designs, we design and install outdoor lighting systems that will accentuate your home and landscapes unique architectural features. Our lighting is subtle, but the results are remarkable. With customized lighting design, we can create a warm and welcoming feeling to all your outdoor spaces. You will look forward to being outside at night, whether you’re entertaining family and friends on a warm summer evening, or keeping warm by a fire pit on a late autumn night.
Outdoor lighting can be as simple as defining the edges of a home's walkway, patio and steps. With a layout intent on improving direction and safety in a dark space. Improving safety is one of our primary design goals when we begin the layout of a lighting concept for your property. Steps, uneven surfaces and grade changes are always locations that are improved with introducing lighting.
Establishing a feeling of warmth and excitement to a dark space is also very important to our designers! Outdoor lighting has improved tremendously over the past decade. Industry demand has greatly improved light fixture selection and quality. New lighting manufacturers have expanded into the landscape lighting market. Increases in light fixture selections and advances in LED technology has even helped to lower the costs of professionally installed systems!
Design & Installation of Outdoor Lighting:
For some lighting designers, every outdoor lighting installation is approached the same way, placement of lights along the walkway and maybe a few spotlights on the house or trees in the planting beds. At Rochester Landscape Designs, we have a many lighting design options that can greatly improve how your home and property are viewed during the night time hours.
When we design a lighting system for a property, we start by dividing the landscape spaces into different sections and identifying the key elements that will be highlighted. The functional use of the spaces also determine lighting needs, such as entertainment areas.
3. Up Lighting
Up lights are placed underneath a tree to highlight the shape and branches of it. This provides an warming glow that also adds to the tree visibility at night, Depending on the tree's size, one fixture up to several may placed around the branches perimeter. The placing of the up lights, are determined by the light strength and beam spread required for each tree based on its importance in the landscape. We strategically place up lights on trees in different locations around the yard to help balance light and dark spaces. Our goal is to create balanced lighting coverage along your house and outdoor spaces.
After establishing these three main types of lighting, we consider other lighting options. Some examples may include:
1. Functional Lighting
Includes light fixtures that are needed to improve safety, including deck lights, stair lights, and patio light. These lights are placed in locations to give excellent light coverage without necessarily being obvious during the day time. Stair lights, for instance, are louvered covers that stand up to being kicked occasionally and work great lighting the steps. Patio lights can fit under wall coping to light the patio while highlighting the stone work of a sitting wall.
2. Walkway and Patio Lighting (Path Lighting)
Includes above ground and in the open light fixtures. Fixtures can vary greatly in height, style, materials (brass, copper, painted aluminum) and pricing. Path lighting certainly improves safety, but are generally more decorative as they will be seen during daytime as well.
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Down Lighting: mounting lights fixture up in a tree or off the house to shine light down on the ground.
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Wall Washing: placing a light at the base of a homes foundation and casting a beam of light to softly accent the features on the homes facade.
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Silhouette lighting: placing a light behind an object like a lattice, plant or garden art, so that the object is not directly lit in the front, but you still can define the structure shape at night. This is an excellent way to highlight a statue in the garden.
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Shadowing: shining a light through a shrub or tree to create a shadow on a wall or structure. This is a beautiful effect.
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Underwater Lighting: shining a light through water, particularly moving water, such as a waterfall. The moving water and light creates a stunning effect above the water feature.
Updating Your Current Landscape Lighting
If you have an existing lighting system that is outdated or even not working for unknown reasons, we can repair and improve your existing lighting system. The reuse of existing light fixtures will help to save money on materials and installation.
We can convert a less energy efficient halogen bulb system to operate with LED bulbs. Our low-voltage retrofit kits will require much less energy and produce more light around your home and landscape. We can show you the lighting differences during your free consultation with one of our lighting designers.
Maintenance Service Offered:
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Bulb replacement.
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Lens and contact cleaning.
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Lubrication of electrical contacts where applicable.
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Fixture adjustments and pruning the plantings around each fixtures.
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We can update and repair your older lighting system that may no longer work as originally intended.
Get Your Project Started!
If you would like, we would love to stop by for a casual discussion on what services we offer. We will bring our pencil, paper and all our best ideas! We can help get your landscape lighting ideas planned! Call our office @ (585) 645-3182 or fill out the contact form to arrange for your complimentary landscape and design consultation!
