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Outdoor Lighting - A Valuable Enhancement
 Most
homeowners no longer perceive outdoor lighting as a frivolous, after the
fact, add-on when their landscape projects are completed. Homeowners lavish
love, care and invest thousands of dollars into the design and installation
of aesthetically pleasing outdoor spaces. Often, they don't return
home from work until it's nearly dark. It makes sense, to extend
into the evening hours the enjoyment of your skillfully crafted outdoor
spaces with stunning nightscapes.
Outdoor lighting can even enhance indoor spaces by
drawing one's eyes to dramatic, intriguing, mysterious, and attractive
winter and summer scenes through your windows. Lighting special effects
encourages and prolongs "after hours" recreation, entertainment,
and interest in your outdoor living spaces. Lighting increases property
value by enhancing the architectural features of your home, patios, and
gardens.
"If your eyes are the windows to your soul,"
then light sings to the soul. We at Skyhorse Station can create a visual
melody by landscape illumination.
Lighting is more an art than a science. Lighting
your outdoor living spaces is like a painting. Our designers are artists
and light is their paint. Each brush stroke they paint, or light, brings
to life something from the darkness. With a digital camera we can take
an image of your home and with computer software we can demonstrate light
casting in any direction, position and intensity.
Landscape lighting or accent lighting comes in seven
or more "flavors," or lighting techniques. First, we strive
to create an artistic balance with these techniques, and then in the three
physical space planes that exist on your homesite.
The following are Light casting design techniques
which our designers' use to create special effects in the darkness
of evening landscapes.
- Moonlighting or down lighting
- Silhouetting or backlighting to create a halo
effect
- Shadowing of objects onto the background
- Spot lighting - Accenting of architectural
and site features such as specimen trees, fountains or statuary.
- Grazing - casting light across the surface
to show texture
- Up-lighting - Surface or recessed to cast
light up into the tree canopy or facades of structures.
Cross lighting - use of two or more lights from
opposite directions to present three-dimensional effects.
Other specialty illumination concepts include: Near & distant focal
point lighting; area or spread lighting; path or walkway lighting; flower
bed lighting; entryway, step, rail and deck/patio lighting; boulder/stone
wall,
and border lighting; water features/fountain lighting; use of white and
colored lights with a variety of bulbs - L.E.D. light emitting diode,
tengstun halogen, mercury vapor et.al . Low voltage light is safe for
children and animals to be around. Increase of night visibility increases
safety for your guests, and reduces the risk of intruders that can lower
insurance rates.
If the irrigation controller is the brain of a water
management system then the transformer controller is the heart of outdoor
lighting systems.
To maximize benefits of lighting, transformer controllers
may be integrated with such components as: photocells to activate illumination
at dark; timers to turn systems off at a predetermined time: dimmers to
control intensity and may be combined with motion or occupancy sensors
to activate full lighting when family or unauthorized persons enter an
area and then reduce lighting to a pre-determined minimum as persons leave
the area.
Lighting Manufacturers and Warranty
We use various suppliers such as: Kichler, Hadco, Vista, Focus, Lumiere
et.al with high quality, durable, and low maintenance products that come
with excellent warranties. Generally, we use brass, copper, stainless
steel, aluminum, and plastic to avoid rust and breakage and to complement
site aesthetics. All component parts meet requirement standards of the
National Electric Code and Underwriters Laboratory #1038 for low voltage
systems.
Lighting Services
Maintenance, repair, and upgrades plans are available and can be tied
to our quarterly or annual Plant Maintenance and Irrigation Maintenance
Programs.
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