Landscape Lighting Blog
What Actually Happens on Install Day
People ask me a lot of good questions before they sign off on a lighting project. What fixtures, what it costs, how long the LEDs last. But the question I get least often is the...
What People Actually Do With Their Lighting App After the First Week
When I'm demoing permanent trim for somebody, the app is usually where I lose them for a second. I'll pull out my phone and start swiping through colors on their own roofline,...
What You’re Really Spending on Christmas Lights Every Year
I had a conversation last fall that stuck with me. A guy in Chandler was asking about permanent trim, and partway through he said something like, well, that's a lot of money...
Why I Tell People to Book Their Holiday Lights in August
I start booking Christmas light installs in August. People give me a hard time about it. It was 112 yesterday and I had two holiday design visits scheduled. But there's a reason...
Do Permanent Trim Lights Raise Your Power Bill? Let’s Do the Math
I get asked this on probably half of my quotes and I've never written it down anywhere, so here it is. Short answer: no, not really. It's a few dollars a month for most houses....
Why the Lights at the End of Your Run Are Dimmer Than the Rest
This is one of those problems where people live with it for years and just assume that's how it is. You walk out front, the first couple of fixtures near the transformer look...
Outdoor Lighting Gets More Important as You Get Older
I do a lot of work out in Sun City and Sun City West, and a few years back I started noticing something about those jobs that I hadn’t really thought about before. The...
What Arizona’s Dark Sky Rules Actually Mean for Your Outdoor Lighting
Got a call from a guy in Fountain Hills back in the spring. He was pretty worked up. He’d put in landscape lighting himself, big weekend project, and somebody had said something...
Outdoor Lighting for Your Phoenix Airbnb
This one's for the short-term rental folks, because I've done a bunch of these lately and there's a side to it most owners don't think about until I point it out. Here's the...
What Monsoon Season Does to Your Outdoor Lighting
We're in it right now, so the timing on this is good. If you're new to Phoenix, monsoon season runs roughly from mid-June into September. And if you grew up somewhere with normal...
Why Your Neighbor’s Permanent Trim Lights Look Cheap (And Yours Don’t Have To)
You’ve seen the house I’m talking about. Drive through any neighborhood in Gilbert or Mesa around the holidays now and there’s always one. Permanent trim lights on the roofline,...
How to Light a Saguaro (and Other Desert Plants That People Always Get Wrong)
Okay so this is one of those things I end up explaining at almost every consultation, and I figured I’d just put it down somewhere. People want their landscape lit. Fine. Good....