Take a moment and envision your home with the landscape of your dreams, perfectly maintained, well balanced, and naturally drawing focus to your front door.  Now picture it again at night, coming home from dinner or hosting guests. Many of you may see lighting throughout the landscape illuminating your path— you’re on the right track. If you’re picturing complete darkness, this article is for you too.

Outdoor lighting is a feature that can invigorate your existing landscape or elevate your upcoming project to the next level. For many of us, our home is our biggest investment and our landscape is an extension of that so maximizing our usage of the space is paramount. Proper lighting highlights key features, adds security, increases functionality, and enhances the overall enjoyment of a space. At Rost Inc., we often use lighting to highlight points of interest like specimen trees and boulders in the landscape or interesting architecture on the home. This adds definition to the space and shows off key features that make your home special. There are a number of pitfalls to avoid when designing your lighting package such as the runway effect: too much symmetry on walks, or lighting overkill that overexposes an area. Pool areas and patios flourish with lighting systems in place; maximizing usage and enhancing enjoyment of the space and mobile app make controlling your system as easy as changing a song.  These areas can benefit from the color fixtures that allows you to choose any shade imaginable to set the mood or establish a theme to for events or holidays. We can also use fixtures to eliminate dimly lit areas around the property and allow you to feel more secure at home. The list of benefits is goes on but I’ll let the photos of past projects do the rest.

Now is a great time to look into landscape lighting; the industry has seen a renaissance in the past few years with the rise in quality and affordability of LEDs and smart controllers. Lines of integrated fixtures are now available that wick heat away from the LED panels and double the life of the LEDs over their non-integrated counterparts. This eliminates the need for routine maintenance and bulb replacement that have plagued halogen bulb systems for decades. The integrated fixtures come with a 10-year manufacturer warranty that ensures your system stays relevant for years to come.

Lighting is a growing trend in the landscape industry that will only continue to expand and become more accessible as the technology progresses. It has already eliminated the need short-lived and limited soffit fixtures just through its versatility and ease of use. This is complimented by the minimally invasive install process and quick turnaround time for new systems. The ever-expanding product lines of Fx and others ensures that whether it’s path lights, cans, wall lights or washes, we’ve got you covered, and all you’ll need is to find someone with the design and install experience to make it a reality.