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Too many fixtures. This might be the most common low voltage lighting mistake. If you have too much light nothing stands out, new ways of seeing your garden are washed away in the glare. I recommend you start with the smallest system you can imagine being “enough”. Then live with it for a little while and add fixtures if needed. A typical 5000 square foot Portland lot might need less than 10 fixtures to properly light their entire property!
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Repetitive lighting techniques. Imagine your front yard has 3 trees that could be considered focal points. Should you light each one the same way? Probably not. Instead of up lighting all of them, perhaps you could back light one -preferably a deciduous tree, like a Japanese maple, that will have an amazing silhouette all winter. There are some many types of fixtures and effects to employ, look to incorporate a few of them.
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Solar lighting. It is terrible. Don’t do it.
That’s just three things to avoid, but it gets you on your way to an excellent lighting system for your landscape. The best way to make sure your system is both highly beautifying and highly functional is to hire a design build team like Ross NW Watergardens. Contact us today to set up a free low voltage lighting consultation!
