what wattage of flood light to use on trees in landscaping

You've pulled out all the stops to make your house and k look first-rate. So why let that difficult work disappear at nightfall. With a movie of a switch and some strategically placed outdoor house lights, you can roll back the darkness and put it all on display? Done right, mural lighting makes the best of what you've got by highlighting your home's architectural features and drawing attention to prized plantings and copse.

What is the Best Landscape Lighting?

Most landscape lighting today is low voltage, and with practiced reason. Unlike 120-volt systems, it's safer to work with and less plush to install. And though low-voltage lights receive one-tenth the power, thanks to a step-downwards transformer, there's no limit to the effects they can accomplish, from ethereal moonlight beamed down from a tree canopy to a subtle glow that washes over a low garden wall. More than just picking the right hardware, a pleasing lighting scheme is also about artistry.

What'southward in a Low-Voltage Outdoor Lighting System?

Mural lighting typically relies on stepped-down ability from your house.

Transformer: Reduces 120-volt household current to a safer 12 volts.
Seedling: Determines a light's effulgence, color, and beam width, as well equally electricity usage.
Fixture Housing: Protects bulb from elements and helps shape light axle.
Stake: Holds the fixture in identify.
Cable: Carries current to light through fixture's atomic number 82 wires. Underlit trees and accent lights aimed at the facade create an inviting post-dusk atmosphere around this home.

Key Questions Answered

DIY or Hire a Pro?

Homeowners can put in a uncomplicated arrangement in a weekend. For the most stunning effects, go with a landscape lighting specialist familiar with the various fixtures and ways to arrange them.

How Much Does it Toll to Install Outdoor Lighting?

Private fixtures offset effectually $twenty. Cables run seventy cents per foot, and a transformer can be had for nearly $200. A ten-low-cal system installed by a pro typically starts at nigh $2,000 to $2,500.

How Much Maintenance is Required?

Keep fixtures complimentary of leaves and droppings to prevent them from overheating. Replace burned-out bulbs immediately and then that others on the circuit aren't subject to life-shortening voltage overloads.

How Long Exercise Lighting Fixtures Terminal?

Warranties on fixtures and transformers range from one to ten years, but fixtures made of brass, copper, or stainless steel should shine indefinitely.

How to Map out a Program for Your Outside Lights

If you don't want to lift a finger, go with a pro. (Discover ane through the Association of Outdoor Lighting Professionals.) Merely homeowners willing to invest a piffling of their own fourth dimension and energy can relieve a package past following the advice of Mark Piantedosi, possessor of Democracy Landscape Lighting in Acton, Massachusetts. Here are his superlative design tips:

Trees

Well, bullet, or flood, and downlight.

When aiming ground lights direct up into foliage, be sure to also bathe the trunk in light. If you don't, the uplit crown will look similar a hovering UFO. When illuminating leafage from above, place two 20-watt downlights as high in a tree every bit possible and point them so that their beams do not cross.

Planting Beds

Garden.

Place fixtures no closer than 20 anxiety apart. "You want pools of calorie-free to guide your eye from one plant to the next, not continuous illumination."

Home Facade

Bullet and wash.

Fit bullet lights with bulbs that have 12-caste axle spreads, and aim them at the corners of your firm or architectural details; softer wash lights can fill in the space between them.

Garden Walls

Well, bullet, or alluvion.

Position fixtures close to the base so that the beams bring textures into sharp relief.

Focal Points

Flood, bullet, or wash.

Highlight an element that deserves attention—such equally a fountain, a tree swing, or an arbor—by aiming two or more lights at it. The crossing beams reduce the harsh shadows that form when only one shines on an object.

For more outdoor-lighting pattern ideas, visit FX Luminaire'southward "Learning Eye" or consult the archetype guide The Mural Lighting Book, by Janet Lennox Moyer.

Types of Outdoor House Lights

Garden

Canopies on height of 18- to 24-inch posts reflect calorie-free downwards into planting beds. Tin can also be used as pathway markers. Unlike other lights, their fashion and end are on display.

Shown: Large Horizon path light past Hadco with xx-watt element of group vii bulb, almost $50; Hadco Lighting

Launder

Throws out a soft, diffuse light ideal for brightening apartment facades, privacy fences, and garden walls.

Shown: Landscape LED past Kichler with 4-watt LED, about $140; Kichler

Bullet

These versatile, compact fixtures are frequently fitted with bulbs that project a narrow beam—proficient for precisely lighting house features, tree trunks, and garden structures.

Shown: LV100 spotlight by Dabmar with 20-watt halogen, nigh $20; Dabmar

Well

The bulb hides inside a waterproof housing cached in the ground, so you get light without seeing a fixture. Use well lights to illuminate the underside of plant foliage or graze the base of operations of a facade or wall. Available with either stock-still or swiveling bulbs.

Shown: LV300SLV well light by Dabmar with twenty-watt halogen, most $30; Dabmar

Downlight

These fixtures, often located high on trunks and branches, tin can be aimed at lawns, paths, or the tree'southward own leafage to create a moonlit effect. A long, cowl-shaped shroud around the bulb eliminates side glare. Choose durable copper and brass housings with LEDs—you lot don't want to be climbing to make repairs or replacements.

Shown: CM.115T by CopperMoon with 35-watt halogen, almost $160; CopperMoon

Flood

Typically casts a wider axle than a bullet—40 degrees or more—and is brighter than a wash light. A collar minimizes side glare. Apply sparingly to lite upward tall trees or wide house facades.

Shown: CM.895 by CopperMoon with twenty-watt element of group vii, about $100; CopperMoon

Should You Pay More for LEDs?

With no filament to break or burn out, LEDs can last 40,000 hours, approximately twenty years of regular employ, compared with only two years for halogen bulbs. LEDs are also extremely efficient, sipping 1 to 11 watts of power versus 20 to sixty watts for halogens.

That means lower installation costs due to smaller transformers and cables, lower operating costs, and reduced maintenance, for up to a fifty-percent savings over halogen systems in the course of 15 years.

Merely LEDs have their drawbacks, chiefly their high initial cost—almost $xl per seedling, compared with almost $5 for a similar halogen. Too, many LEDs accept a cold blue light with a color temperature around six,000 Chiliad (kelvins).

Look instead for a warm-color temperature, about 3,000 K. And don't forget to look at lite output, in lumens, to make sure you're getting plenty brightness. LED performance is improving, but information technology still lags behind that of halogens. Dismal output is the biggest knock confronting solar-powered fixtures, which all apply LEDs. They might have plenty glow to define a garden edge just non to low-cal upwards your business firm.

5 Tips for DIYers

Where to buy? All the components you demand are available online at sites such equally Landscape Lightwerks or VOLT.
What skills practice you demand? Excavation trenches and connecting fixtures and cables is straightforward stuff. Simply if you don't have a 20-amp GFCI-protected outdoor receptacle to plug the transformer into, hire a licensed electrician to install 1.
What size transformer? To determine the watt-chapters of your transformer, add together up the total wattage of all the lights yous plan to install and multiply by 1.25.
How to control the lights? Timers are the most reliable automatic switches; the all-time ones adapt for seasonal changes in day length. Wireless keypads and fobs are convenient means to manually control your lights and, unlike hardwired switches, don't require an electrician to install them.
How to ensure uniform brightness? Attaching fixtures to one cable in a daisy chain can overpower the lights closest to the transformer and leave the last few ability-starved and dim. The solution: Run a 10-gauge cablevision out to a hub—a waterproof junction box—and branch out with equal lengths of 12-gauge cable. Keep the runs under 50 feet, and ability should get in at halogen fixtures in their sugariness spot: 10.eight to 11.five volts (for LEDs, 8 to 15 volts).

Low-voltage cables (left) must be cached at least 6 inches deep. A plastic spike (center) anchors the fixture (right) in the ground.

Like to shown: Frosted Globe walk light by Malibu with 11-watt bulb, about $twenty; Total LED Malibu Lighting

Mural Lighting Design Ideas

Fetching Facade

Up-facing bullet lights placed near a foot from the foundation focus attention on a firm'south near appealing architectural elements. Here, they are aimed at chunky porch columns, deep eaves, and dormers.

Shown: Intrepid directional lights with 20-watt halogens, nearly $85 each; Unique Lighting Systems

Standout Copse

Trees less than twenty feet tall demand only a couple of 20-watt uplights. A fifty-pes tree may require three to five uplights of 35 to 50 watts apiece.

Similar to shown: Bullet emphasis lights with 20-watt halogens, about $62; Focus Industries

Inviting Lawn

The front end of the firm isn't the simply place to use landscape lights. Here, tree-mounted downlights and upward-pointing well lights evidence off this tree's branch structure and invite people to come out and relish the swing.

Shown: PortaleEnfer well lite with 11-watt LED array, virtually $135 each, and TrellisSolare downlight with 20-watt bulb, about $65 each; FX Luminaire

Glowing Garden

To properly illuminate a bed, garden fixtures must be taller than the plantings, such as these succulents, that you lot desire to showcase.

Similar to shown: Terralight Tudor Serial LVW6319 with eighteen-watt bulb; about $120 each; Hanover Lantern

Party-Ready Patio

Because you can't just dial upwardly a full moon, sometimes you lot demand some actress illumination. In addition to providing low-cal to grill by, a handful of tree-mounted lights breast-stroke this stone patio in a mood-setting glow.

Shown: Lunar downlight with xx-watt halogen, almost $140 each; Unique Lighting Systems

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Source: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/landscaping/21017967/all-about-landscape-lighting