Electrical Industry Articles and Stories

Outdoor landscape lighting is not just about illuminating the exterior of homes and businesses; it's a burgeoning market with a glowing future.

Lighting the great outdoors requires a bit more thought now than it did a couple decades ago. The goal used to be simply packing as many lumens as possible into a landscape fixture. That was the entire point. Photocell sensors might have been used to ensure lights didn’t stay on during daylight hours, but keeping outdoor space fully illuminated – even when no humans were around – was seen as a key safety measure.

There it is again! That cat’s chasing rabbits in my garden again tonight. I knew something was tearing things up in there at night, so I installed a set of solar powered floods on the top of the gate.

As I pondered this topic, I was relaxing in our side yard, gazing at the garden in the dark. Well, not totally in the dark. The garden was delightfully illuminated by flickering tiki torch lamps … lit by LEDs, charged by the sun. Spotlights shone on my miniature windmill as it lazily spun in the evening breeze.

I’ll make no bones about it. LEDs are the light of my life. Okay, maybe that’s going just a bit far … but not much. If you want to find an incandescent or fluorescent lamp in my house, you’re going to have to look hard. I think I may have a few C7s left to replace. But only because they’re hard to get to.