Landscape Lighting Technologies Ingrid Wood, Wolf Creek Company
Technology makes our life easier and more fun! Home automation is trending, and technology plays an ever-bigger role in our green industry as well. There are so different landscape lighting options that it can get confusing. We want you to understand these options and be prepared when your clients ask for color enhancement or warmth settings with their lighting. Chuck Watterson gave a wonderful training at the ONLA Virtual Education Sessions this past January that helps shed light on the matter. Why should you learn about landscape lighting? It is the way of the future and you want to stay in-the-know. And of course, adding lighting to your business means added revenue stream. You need to understand the differences between these lighting technology systems so that you can explain their benefits and sell these products to your clients. LED and Colors Make Lighting Affordable and Fun!
Some homeowners may have seen Bluetooth or WIFI landscape lighting at a friend’s home and want to get their landscape lit. Other homeowners don’t even know they want this until they see it, and they may not even understand why they want it. But they know they want to be able to use their phone to control it. With the invention of LED, cost of leaving lights on has come down, so running lights at night does not cost the homeowner as much as it has in the past. For the homeowner, effectively lit landscaping does not only provide security and safety, it also adds beauty and value to the property and expands their livable space. Lighting technology allows you to change the lighting color and mood. Homeowners can show off their sports team colors, add fun to a 4th of July party, or create a soft romantic setting for an intimate anniversary dinner. 10 The Buckeye
Sample Project: Lighting the Front of a Home
Let’s do a sample project of lighting the front of a home with an entry way offset. The typical setup will need: garage 3 fixtures, 1-2 between garage and entry, the entry 2 fixtures, dining room 2-3 fixtures, for a total of 8-10 fixtures. Adam Cornish, Territory Manager at our Cincinnati branch, explained this using the following scenarios: • Existing Lighting Upgrade with WIFI • Install on a Budget with Bluetooth • High-end New Install with WIFI • Upgrade Existing Lighting with WIFI If there is existing lighting installed and the homeowner wants to add color enhancement and warmth settings, it is the easiest to retrofit the lamps. Each lamp connects independently to the internet router over WIFI. You will need: • • •
A modern router, made for the Internet of Things (IoT) MR16 bullet or PAR36 large lamps, for example Chameleon from Brilliance. To install the Brilliance app on your phone, or you can use Alexa or Google Home. onla.org
