Landscape lighting can add beauty to your home as well as provide increased safety on your property.  Lighting design can be used to light pathways, highlight your homes architecture, and deter intruders.  When considering adding lighting to your landscaping, it is important to find the right balance of lighting.  Focus on adding lighting to main activity areas like driveways, entrances, pathways, dark areas around windows, and stairs and main focal points such as fountains, trees, or statues.  The following landscape lighting basics can help make the most of your lighting.

Up-lighting: Up-lighting is placing a light facing upward toward an object to illuminate it.  This works well for highlighting the focal points of your landscape or home.  Use it sparingly to highlight objects around your yard like statues, trees, flag poles, and fountains.

Down-lighting: Down-lighting is used to illuminate large areas.  It works well for illuminating entertainment areas such as a patio or a deck.  It also helps to deter intruders.

Accent Lighting: Accent lighting is an excellent choice for lighting paths and stairs by placing lights along both edges of a path or a staircase.  This looks beautiful and has the added safety feature of helping prevent people from tripping and falling.  Accent lighting can also add focus to low-lying flowers, shrubs, and ponds.

Advantages of Low Voltage Lighting: As part of your basic landscape lighting, you have the choice between using 120v and low voltage 12v lighting.  Low voltage has a lot to offer in terms of landscape lighting safety as well not having to dig 18 inch trenches into your yard. Low voltage lighting can be neatly tucked away, just below your yard’s surface.  It is safer in wet conditions, and it offers more precise lighting effects.  Because the lamps (light bulbs) are smaller, it allows for smaller, less obtrusive fixtures.  It can also save you money by having lower energy costs.  Low voltage lighting requires a transformer to convert 120v to 12v which can cause voltage drop (dim lights) if it is improperly engineered.  For this, it is a good idea to ask a professional electrician for help.

These tips will get you started.  For more ideas, ask a lighting consultant for suggestions, and for any questions, don’t hesitate to contact www.electricmaninc.com to find the answers you need!

Think your home’s lighting is worthy of sharing? Post to our Facebook Fan Page!

About ElectricMan Inc.

ElectricMan Inc. is one of Dallas’ most trusted electricians. Nick Schaeffer, Mr. ElectricMan himself, has quite the resume for a master electrician. He started the company by himself in 2004 and hasn’t looked back since! For more information about Electricman’s list of electrical repair services, please visit www.ElectricManInc.com

Lighting is a critical aspect in a number of industries such as manufacturing, mining, marine, packaging, and even sports. Electrical fixtures for such industries are designed for heavy duty performance and can last even in the most adverse conditions such as extreme temperatures and climate.

Apart from ensuring proper lightening and enhancing the output, electrical lighting also helps in maintaining safety in your workplace. If you have a well-lit work space, then your workers can avoid unwarranted accidents like stepping on sharp tools, bumping into equipment, etc. You can use a wide range of electrical light fixtures such as LED, magnification lights, fluorescent lamps, halogen machine lighting, etc.

You must choose the right light fixtures based on the environment you work in and the lighting demands of the space where you need to install them. Let us look at some industrial lighting fixtures that are available.

5 Types of Industrial Lighting Fixtures

In industries like mining, transportation, steel, marine, etc., there are high risks of explosions which you cannot overlook at any cost. You have to make sure that the lighting fixtures have the ability to withstand the heat and pressures that are generated by an explosion. Explosion proof fixtures meet some of the most stringent quality standards of the National Electric Code.

Indoor fixtures can be installed in a number of indoor work areas like workshops, workstations, bays, etc. As different work environments have different requirements for lighting systems, it would be ideal to contact a supplier who can offer you customized lighting requirements. Ensure that the lighting systems are capable of withstanding harsh working conditions as well as extreme temperatures.

Roadway fixtures are ideal for places where you need high mast lighting. Safety is extremely important on the roads and is of major concern for the protection of all those present on the road, which is why you need a brightly lit road. You can control the amount of light generated by these roadway fixtures to make them brighter or dimmer, based on the time of the day they are being switched on.

Every sports ground requires proper lighting. It isn’t a pleasant experience for the spectators when they can’t clearly see what’s going on in the ground/field and it would equally hinder the players from performing well if the lighting is compromised. Regardless of which sport it is, be it tennis, football, cricket, basketball or rugby, flood lights are an indispensable part.

Places like nuclear plants, mining fields, oil rigs and underwater operations require high quality and failure-free lighting solutions. It is important that there are various kinds of light sources as well as lights so that the work doesn’t halt due to lighting failure of any kind. Ideally, you must not use regular industrial lighting fixtures in such places. Make sure the lighting you use are reliable, have a long life and have low maintenance costs.