The light stuff

Experts reveal the latest outdoor lighting
trends to brighten up a home or landscape

By Mary Beth Almond
C & G Staff Writer

Outdoor lighting not only gives homeowners a creative way to flaunt their homes and landscapes after dark, experts argue it can make homes safer and increase property values.

“Anytime you can enhance your outdoor surroundings, whether it’s outdoor landscaping or lighting, it definitely will increase the value of the home,” said Karl Bednarowski, owner of Lone Star Landscaping of Shelby Township.

Bednarowski said the main reason people decide to give their landscape or home some night lighting is for the artistic beauty, but most don’t realize that by adding lights they are also increasing pedestrian safety.

“Path lights can illuminate steps that might not be seen if you didn’t have the lighting for walking,” he said. “And if a house has some lighting on it, it deters prowlers and people who shouldn’t be around the house.”

Bednarowski said outdoor lighting has come a long way since he opened his full-service landscape company in 1984, and that people need to educate themselves about the latest lighting trends before hiring a contractor or jumping into a project.

Paul Eddleston, who opened Illuminata Creative Exterior Lighting in Birmingham more than 12 years ago, agrees that the landscape lighting industry has matured. He said new lighting products reflect that.

“Your basic professional-grade fixtures are a lot higher quality than they used to be, and there is also a trend towards architectural-grade fixtures made with brass and copper. We are also starting to see, at the low end of the market, the new LED light bulb technology,” he said.

LED stands for light-emitting diode, which Eddleston explained as the little red dot you see on the front of your TV when you turn it on. He said the technology has advanced to the point where the LED bulbs are becoming powerful enough to produce useful light, so companies are starting to cluster them together in the form of a light bulb. According to Eddleston, the benefit of LED lights is that they have an extremely long lamp life, 10,000-20,000 hours or even up to 50,000 hours. He said they also don’t produce any heat, are very efficient and use almost no electricity.

On the other hand, Eddleston sees two downsides of LED bulbs. One is the cost, which he said is still a little high, adding that the money spent initially on the products can be returned in the long run due to the low running cost. From a designer’s point of view, he said, the second disadvantage is the light output. The light has a colder, blue effect, according to Eddleston, and the beam impact is narrower, causing the user to have to concentrate the little light the bulbs produce.

“The light output hasn’t yet surpassed or equaled the output we get from our typical tool, which is the MR16 halogen light bulb,” he said. “It’s not quite replacing the bulbs that we use yet, but it will be shortly.”

A possible downside for Michigan residents is that LED bulbs don’t produce heat, so they won’t melt the snow in the winter.

Another trend Eddleston said is becoming more popular is integrated home automation systems to control landscape and exterior lighting.

“Most systems just have a clock in the transformer that loses time and gets all messed up and constantly needs programming, but that’s not really the way it needs to be these days because the technology is out there,” he said. “We can now set them up so they do what the user wants when the user wants it … as opposed to imposing the restrictions of build control systems on the user.”

For more information on Lone Star Landscaping, call (586) 991-0210 or visit www.lonestarlandscaping.biz. For Illuminata Creative Exterior Lighting, call (248) 207-0894 or visit www.creativeexteriorlighting.com.