Christmas Light Installation, What You Get When Somebody Else Hangs Them|Should You Hire Out Your Christmas Light Installation What the Job Includes
The case for handing it off The job looks easy from the ground, then it eats a whole weekend. Between the ladder, the cold, and the strands that quit halfway through, hiring it out stops feeling like a luxury. What you should be getting A proper Christmas light installation is more than a crew showing up with your old strands. First a design, drawn for your house rather than pulled off a shelf. Then installation, which is the part you are really paying to skip. Then upkeep
Curb Appeal Lighting for Your Home, The Half of Curb Appeal Everyone Forgets|How Does Outdoor Lighting Affect Curb Appeal?|Nighttime Curb Appeal: A Homeowner's Guide
Curb appeal gets planned entirely for daylight People spend serious effort on the exterior: landscaping, paint, hardware, plantings. All of it is designed for daylight. Then the sun goes down and none of it is visible. For a solid stretch of the year, most passersby only ever see the house at night.Put together, these are not expensive changes. What it requires is deciding to treat the night view as a real thing, which is the part almost everybody skips. The houses that sta
Accent Lighting for Your Home: Picking What Deserves the Light|How Does Accent Lighting Differ From Everything Else? A Plain Answer|Accent Lighting Done Right on a Real Property
Accent lighting is a choice about what to leave dark The difference between accent lighting and general lighting is the question being asked. It is selective by definition. Point it at a specimen tree, a stone column, a water feature, a front door and stop. The dark part is not a gap in the plan. It is the reason the lit thing stands out.That is really the whole idea, and it is not complicated. Pick what matters and resist adding to it. The pull is always toward adding, and
Commercial Exterior Lighting: What the Building Is Doing After Closing|What Commercial Outdoor Lighting Is Really For After the Sun Goes Down|Commercial Outdoor Lighting Done Properly for Restaurants, Retail and Offices
What happens after closing People drive past your building after dark constantly, and it either registers or it does not. Unlit, the building disappears, and so does the business in it. A lit one reads as open, occupied and worth remembering.None of this is about making the building pretty. A building people can find, recognize and walk up to comfortably after dark is working for you during hours you are not open. It is infrastructure, not decor. Where most of the return i
Lighting for Patios and Outdoor Living, A Guide to Evening Outdoor Spaces|How to Light a Patio|Outdoor Living Lighting Done Properly and Why It Is Not the Same as Curb Appeal
The back of the house is not curb appeal The front of a property is a view. The patio is a place you occupy. Everything changes once you are the one sitting under it. Nobody is grading the back yard from the street. What matters is whether people stay out there past nine.All of which is a long way of saying the back yard is its own project. A roofline system handles the street view and almost nothing for where you sit. Two spaces, two separate sets of requirements to satisf
Outdoor Security Lighting, What Actually Deters Someone|Does Security Lighting Work?|Security Lighting That Actually Helps
The default answer, and its problem The standard response to a dark yard is one very bright fixture on a bracket. The instinct makes sense and does not hold up. A single harsh source creates as much shadow as it removes, and those shadows are worse than the original dark.Put all of that together and the picture is not what most people install. It is several modest sources rather than one strong one, aimed at the places that need it. It costs about what people were going to