Outdoor Lighting

Here’s what our house looks like during the day.

And here’s what it looks like at night.

Needless to say, we need better outdoor lighting.  Here are some particular trouble spots that bother me.  Our Garage is detached and we have a long driveway.  The garage itself only has one lighting fixture with 2 bulbs.  It lights up one side pretty well, but leaves the other side dark.  Plus the light is pretty harsh.  It beams right into our eyes when we’re driving into the garage.

Here you can see, the current light does a good job producing light on one side, but leaves other parts dark.

The front of the house is pathetic.  I mean, the builder grade light position only lightens the porch.  Nothing else is lite up at all.

On top of that, our neighborhood is generally dark.  There aren’t many street lights overall, when it’s dark outside, the whole neighborhood stays pretty dark.  I don’t like that.  Not only does it look wack, but it’s a safety hazard as well.  Especially in this season when the sun sets sooo early.  I just want to see where I’m walking and make it easy for guest to find my house (and deter any would-be thieves).

I’ve used this electrician before at the previous house and he did an amazing job.  So I called him again to work his magic.  I purchased the lights we wanted.

His team came and drilled holes and ran cables.

And inserted the proper fittings for mounting the lights.

They had to bring in the big ladder for the puck lights.

Here are the new lights installed.

Here’s what they look like at night.

Clearly a HUGE difference!  Here’s a side-by-side comparison:

We’re really happy with the results.  You’ll note that there are still a few dark spots in the front, but it’s still a significant difference!  The only problem we’re facing is that the front lights are so bright that they potentially bother the neighbor in front of us!  Last night I we noticed that light was peering into their home, so we’ll use those sparingly, but overall, we love it!  I actually wanted puck lights in the front of the house as well, but my electrician said due to the shape of our roof line, it would be difficult/impossible to place the lights in the perfect spot for it to be symmetrical.  With that, we went with the wall mounted lights for the front.