Let LED fixtures light up your outdoor space
Homeowners who carefully craft their landscape enjoy showing off their surroundings even at night, with uplighting that shines on an eye-catching tree, downlighting casting a flow over an interesting path, recessed lighting along a pond to draw notice to the water -- anything that's attractive enough for after-hours attention.Landscape lighting styles evolve just like anything decorative, and right now fixtures are more natural looking."People are looking for fixtures that are in earth tones and in the bronze families," says Marty Bursky, president of Cleveland Lighting One in Lyndhurst.But the biggest buzz in landscape lighting has more to do with function than garden fashion, and the source of the excitement is light-emitting diode, or LED."The hottest, latest trend is not a design or look, but a technology," says Jack Miller, who handles landscape lighting for Kichler Lighting in Cleveland. "It's [LED] the most energy-efficient light source today."LED is streaming into indoor lighting, too, but it has a big place outdoors: in chandeliers for outdoor kitchens, fixtures along paths or atop deck posts, and so on.An LED is a semiconductor device that converts electricity into light. LED lighting has been around for years in car lights, traffic signals and radios. But it wasn't very bright, and didn't come in clear white.LED technology has improved and is spreading rapidly into everyday lighting. LED bulbs operate on a lot less electricity than standard light bulbs. Whereas a standard bulb lasts for 750 hours, the LED equivalent lasts for about 40,000 hours -- which translates to 20 or more years.Bursky says that Cree, a company that manufactures LED lighting products, jokingly puts it this way: If you have a baby and install an LED bulb at the same time, it will be time to change the bulb when your offspring comes home for college.Miller and Bursky say that fixtures that use LED technology don't look different than ones that use standard bulbs, but the LED version can be twice as expensive. That's only in the short run. Users stand to save thousands of dollars over the long run in energy consumption and bulb replacement.So landscaping is going "green" not only with more emphasis on organic growing and fewer pesticides, now it's the lighting, too, with less energy consumption.LED landscaping lighting ties into another trend: outdoor living, or "outdoor rooms," with the thinking that your yard as an open-air extension of your home.Exterior lighting is designed to focus on an interesting architectural feature or features of a home. LED lighting factors into that, too, because it is easier to beam in one direction than standard bulbs.Landscaping recently has become more elegant and sophisticated, and, unlike the old flood lights in corners, so have landscape lighting fixtures. Standing path lights are erect with fanciful domes or graceful with swan necks. Deck lights have interesting texture, such as a hammered effect. Companies are coming out with a "family" of designs that coordinate throughout a landscape.Most of what's available today bespeaks subtle taste and softness. Lighting and the fixtures are meant to be shown off, but subtly.Says Bursky, "Be thoughtful and selective of the trees, foliage and architectural details you would like to illuminate. We're not landing aircraft in our yards, and I've always had the concept that less is more."