Low-Voltage Landscape Lighting

<p>Less than most people assume. A landscape lit evenly and brightly all over looks like a parking lot. The good version is selective: enough on steps, grade changes and the walk to the front door for safety, then a few deliberate features. Around here the obvious feature is tree canopy. The mature willow oaks and pin oaks in older Raleigh neighborhoods have real structure, and a couple of well-aimed uplights into a canopy does more for a house at night than a dozen fixtures along a driveway.</p> <p>Facade lighting works on brick and on textured stone, where grazing light picks up relief. On flat vinyl it usually just makes a bright patch, so it is often better spent elsewhere.</p>

<p>Direct-burial cable, buried at a consistent depth, with connections made in waterproof connectors rather than twisted and taped. That last detail is where cheap installs fail. Piedmont clay traps water against a buried splice and holds it there, and corrosion at a connection shows up as a fixture that flickers or dies a year in. Runs also have to be routed with a plan for the future — bed edges get re-cut, aeration happens every fall, and someone will eventually dig a hole for a shrub. Knowing where the cable is prevents that.</p>

<p>Transformer capacity is matched to total fixture load with headroom to add later, and voltage drop over long runs gets calculated instead of guessed, since a light at the far end of an undersized run reads dim and yellow. Control is usually an astronomic timer or a photocell, which follows sunset through the year rather than needing a seasonal reset. Zoning matters too: path and entry lighting on one schedule, feature lighting on another, so the whole system is not burning all night.</p>