Light Up Your Night: Lighting Trends

Lawn and landscape contractors who want to take advantage of this trend need to understand why the customer is interested in lighting and what options are available in lighting fixtures and designs.

SET THE STAGE. In order to create the design that will light the homeowner’s nighttime stage, a contractor must first know where the attention is to be focused. Lighting designer and contractor, Bud Austin, maintains that in order to make a design a masterpiece, questions must be asked of the client to understand how they live. Austin, technical specialist for Hadco, Phoenix, Ariz., suggested asking customers questions on how the yard will be used, what are the people traffic patterns in the yard, how many children are in the home, how the customers entertain and where their primary sitting and entertainment areas are located.

In the lighting business, the contractor is an artist, Austin explained, except you are painting on a black canvas with light.

Clients and designers are becoming more exposed and educated to good lighting techniques, Austin remarked, which in turn leads to customers demanding better designs and manufacturers producing more variety in fixtures. Fixtures are being manufacured more decoratively, so they serve more like attractive metal sculptures during the daylight hours and lighting fixtures during the nighttime, he added.

TRENDS. Lighting designs are moving toward making light look as natural as possible, Austin commented. And in that drive toward natural lighting, the fixtures are being made smaller.

Initially, lighting fixtures were huge and it was hard to hide the light source, he explained. Working with small equipment, it is easier to hide the sources, and miniaturization makes the designs look better and adds a more natural effect.

Mike Southard, national sales manager, Kichler Lighting, Cleveland, Ohio, said the decreasing size of lights has become a popular feature for deck lighting. The lights can be enjoyed without the use of blinding floodlights that were once common.

With the smaller compact fixtures, you can enjoy lighting without a lot of light, he said. When I was young, light was functional. In the 1960s and 1970s, it all changed. Today, there are fewer restrictions and you can become more creative with it, he said.

As time progressed, designs became more elaborate while producing less light because of the increasing popularity of the low-voltage electrical systems in the 1980s, now the norm in residential landscape lighting designs, he said.

Lighting designs are always primary for good landscape lighting and the fixtures are merely secondary, Southard remarked. It should be attractive and blend in with the landscape.

There are so many trends in the market that each person interviewed seemed to offer a new trend that they had observed. There does not seem to be one outstanding trend that anyone noted, except that landscape lighting is becoming more popular, thus creating greater demands on contractors and manufacturers.

Southard also observed a push for more durable fixtures, especially those that are made out of a nonmetal, composite material. This material makes the fixtures able to withstand salt damage that can break down aluminum fixtures over time in the coastal areas, and, in the northern areas, the composite material can withstand the effects of the drastic temperature ranges, snow and deicing materials, he added.

Certain color finishes for fixtures are becoming more trendy with the verdigris finish a weathered green color being pushed off the most popular list by other colors such as copper, brass and rust, according to Southard.

But Austin reminded landscape lighting contractors that, Beauty is in the eye of the checkbook holder.

Leon Frechette, Spokane, Wash., said he sees solar landscape lights becoming an incre asingly popular choice because they offer more flexibility to the design. Solar powered lights offer the ability to add lighting to a location that otherwise could not be reached by electrical power, he said.

Christine Bassett, director of marketing, Lumenyte, Costa Mesa, Calif., a manufacturer of fiber optic lighting systems, noted that fiber optic systems can offer cost efficiency and are safer to use near water than other lighting systems. She adedd that both of the product’s qualities are a growing trend in the diverse market.

Fiber optics are unique because there is no electricity running through the fiber optic line, only light, Bassett explained, which makes it a popular light source around water, such as pools and spas.

Consumers want more energy-efficient lighting systems, and fiber optic lines are durable and able to withstand a wide range of temperatures, she continued. And because the fiber optics are fed from one light source, there is only a need to change one lamp when it burns out, she explained, instead of a lamp for each fixture.

Customers want something low maintenance and safe, she said of the average lighting consumer.With Lumenyte’s design, the lamp can be used for up to 6,000 hours, decreasing maintenance costs and operational costs, Bassett claimed.

Southard observed that there are no trends more popular in one part of the country than the other.

With the Midwest (weather) there is not as much opportunity to be outside, but people tend to enjoy their outside inside, he remarked. It’s real nice to light up the snow at night. Iit’s very dramatic, he said.

DESIGNS. Frechette, author of Builder’s Guide to Decks, included a chapter on how to perform an appealing installation of landscape lights in his book. Two common mistakes he has observed are not hiding the light fixtures when placing them outside and using too many lights, over emphasizing pathways.

You don’t need to outline the property line or outline the driveway with lights. The design would be more desirable if they were on one side, but more people put fixtures on both sides, Frechette explained.

He said he likes to use lights near shrubbery or plants and have the light directed out onto a path or walkway without overilluminating the area. Lights themselves don’t really have any character, Frechette said about nondecorative fixtures. The fixture is an eyesore. The only thing eye-appealing is the dome and, overall, we’re looking at a plain black fixture stuck out of nowhere.

When trying to achieve a more natural scene, Austin said downlighting mounting the light source from atop a high structure, either a tree or house eave, and angling it down on the subject should be the method of choice here because it is the way lighting occurs in nature.

Because uplighting where the lamp is placed on the ground and angled up toward the subject is the most unnatural lighting approach, it should be used only when trying to direct viewers’ attention or make a scene dramatic, Austin recommended.

When using either up- or downlighting, the key is to bring the subject out of the scene, Austin explained.

Good light installation requires that the light source never be seen directly when it is set up. Also, over-lighting a design should be avoided and transformers, wires and fixtures should be out of the way so they do not become a hazard, Austing added.

Frechette commented that security and safety come with lighting, but he has found those not to be the primary reasons people purchase lighting. People are seeking landscape lighting to add a little class to their environment, he stated.

I don’t think weather plays a big part in people deciding to purchase landscape lighting, he added.

Austin relayed that contractors tend to turn their market toward owners in the large, new suburban residences in the subdivisions, but he said he has found that a better market is the smaller, older homes.

People who have been in their homes for years have an older, more established landscape in their yard that can better be put to landscape lighting, he commented. Most developers of new homes have clear-cut the land before building so the landscape tends to be too underdeveloped to set to a design.

Lights can be do wonders and can make a small yard look bigger, or can be used to focus on one interesting point in a small yard, Austin said.

I still feel like we just scratched the surface, said Ray Szwec, regional sales manager of After Hours, a divison of Hinckley Lighting, Cleveland, Ohio. Every time I do a home, you always get others interested in the area, he added.