You’ve installed the pool and the paths and planted your posies. And now, after all that work, it’s time to lighten up — literally. Landscape lighting, one of the most popular ways to enhance your yard, is a low-intervention amenity that can use existing assets such as trees, plantings and architectural elements to highlight your property and extend your living space into the outdoors.
In a 2023 survey, The National Association of Realtors asked more than 2,600 consumers about outdoor home remodeling projects, including popularity, satisfaction and return on investment. Landscape lighting and in-ground swimming pools were the only two projects to score 10 out of 10 on the survey’s “joy factor” question. Specifically, 61% of respondents said they have a “greater desire to be home” and 55% reported “an increased sense of enjoyment when they are at home” after completing lighting projects.
“I can tell you 95% of my clients insist on lighting,” says landscape designer Kevin Keyser, owner of Hamptons Silverleaf Design and Landscape, based in Mattituck. “It gives you another room in your landscape and you can bring inside out.”
An (outdoor) room of one’s own
Though Keyser says there’s no one-size-fits-all, after lighting up outdoor living spaces such as pools, dining and conversation areas, most clients seek to accentuate their garden space, specific plantings or architectural items such as pergolas, fountains or art installations. Trees, he says, offer particular opportunities to create natural drama, as lights can shine on them or from them, and their canopies are easily leveraged for creative designs.
“Each property is unique, but I can always find the proper lighting for what [homeowners] have, use trees to up-light and complement the design of the house,” he says. He recommends hiring a pro not only for the safety factor — he does not advise DIYers to scale ladders — but for their expertise in design and understanding the equipment that will properly deliver light, and where and how it works in harmony with other lighting and architectural features.
“You can’t just throw them down,” Keyser says, adding that designers help achieve the right balance of light and can help clients mix it up. “There is really state-of-the-art lighting that can blend from modern to traditional in a variety of intensities and tones.” Designers will also have knowledge of town codes on lighting guidelines. “They don’t want your place lit up like Lunar Park,” he says.
Then, there’s the matter of birds and creatures of the night that are affected by over lighting, which in birds disrupts flight behavior, nesting and disorients them, causing collisions with buildings. Keyser says designers will know how to comply with local “dark sky” regulations such as those set out by the North Fork Dark Sky Coalition.
What’s on the ground matters, too. Keyser says a good design will provide safety features along walkways, pool edges and trip areas, without the harshness of a security flood light.
“You don’t want your walkway looking like an airport runway,” he says.
Safe and sound
But you do want to ensure your home looks occupied, cared for and isn’t a magnet for vandals, says Geoff Singer, sales and marketing manager at REVCO Lighting & Electrical Supply in Southold and Southampton.
“Aside from aesthetics, there’s a security aspect,” he says. “People don’t run up to the lit-up house – they run up to the dark house.”
Like Keyser, he advises leaving it up to the pros, who can design lighting systems that help se-cure your home without making it look like a prison surveillance tower. Rob Rossi, lighting man-ager at REVCO, says designs that use the home’s natural contours, existing architectural features such as soffits, and strategically placed spotlights trigged by motion sensors, can work in concert with the other lighting features on the property so that the home, yards, driveway and perimeter present a harmonious tableau without screaming “Guard!”
“Different lights do different things and we can make recommendations of what can be placed where,” Singer says. Customers can visit Revco’s Southampton showroom and the design team comes on site to map out a plan according to customer timing and budget. They can work with clients for whom the sky is limit, or those who want to take a conservative approach and build out their lighting as their needs change.
“We can build out in phases or create a full plan with full scope,” Rossi says, adding even a $500 investment can get a client started with the basics. “A lot of people think they need a ton, but honestly, less is more.”
But for those who do want more of a theater marquee style there are options, such as Col-orscaping, a smart lighting system that can change the color and brightness of objects or can be used along driveways and pathways; or “wall washing,” which employs vertical, indirect lighting at different angles and distances to create a uniform illumination over a large surface (particularly advantageous for hiding surface imperfections or other defects).
Some clients request permanent lighting on the house soffits with the ability to program colors that change with the season, or to root for their favorite sports franchise by projecting team colors during a significant game.
“It can be gimmicky, but people love it,” Rossi says. “For the most part, that’s a very small per-centage who want that.”
Value in voltage
The national realtor’s report revealed that along with other landscape projects, lighting is a good investment, with a 59% cost recovery. Other industry estimates place the return as high as 75%, depending on the scope and sophistication of the project.
“Landscape lighting can indeed add significant value to your home,” says Douglas Prexta, landscape sales manager for Hinkley, a lighting specialist in Ohio that supplies local vendors such as REVCO. “It enhances your home’s security and safety and, most importantly, increases the living space of your home, taking the indoors outdoors.”
Prexta says a well-designed landscape lighting system can increase home value 5-10%. System design, complexity and products are factors in those estimates. Fixtures using LED bulbs have a higher value, as do those using quality materials that can withstand the elements.
But there’s no price you can put on the wow factor when a project is completed.
“I have been involved in many designs and installations, and on almost every project we have more than exceeded the customer’s expectations when we flipped the switch on showcasing their landscape lighting at night,” Prexta says.
Dave Girgenti of Innovative Technologies in East Quogue is especially keen on materials, pro-curing most of his equipment from Coastal Source, a family-owned-and-operated manufacturer in the Florida Keys. In its state-of-the-art, dedicated R&D lab, prototypes undergo tests in vari-ous simulated climate conditions.
“They expose their fixtures to everything — salt, hot water, lights,” Girgenti says, adding that all his technicians were trained on-site in Florida. “They make everything there and don’t im-port anything” he says, so the customer knows exactly what they’re getting. To drive that fur-ther home, Girgenti’s team will install a live, temporary presentation on-site, complete with a transformer and light set up.
“We can leave it overnight so customers can experience it, really digest and get a feel for what they’re looking for,” he says.
Girgenti places equal emphasis on quality of design, eschewing out dated styles (hello, 1960 called and wants its hanging lantern back!). He says nothing dates a system more than poor-quality or overly obvious materials.
“Anything hanging on a post or like a lantern looks out of date — even mushroom styles,” he says.
What’s in? Like Rossi, he says less is more.
“Low profile like niche lights, where only the top sticks out or it projects from the side or is a directional on a [moveable] pivot. These can be the size of a cigar on an armature and very un-obtrusive,” he says.
The other thing he pays attention to is color temperature, measured in kelvin and which deliv-ers light in various grades of luminosity and hue. Understanding such nuances is essential in creating a balanced tableau of focal light, fill and backlight — the three points to any system.
“Those calculations will dictate a softer or warmer/cooler look and a lot of thought goes into it,” Girgenti (check) says. “Can you DIY? Sure, the stuff is out there and people do it, but will you get the same effect as us? Absolutely not.”
