A Helpful Guide For Hiring Outdoor Lighting Designer In Houston

Top Qualities Of The Best Houston Exterior Lighting Expert

Landscape lighting is one of the best additions you can make to your Houston, TX home. By adding beautiful exterior lighting, you will be able to enhance its curb appeal and even add safety elements to it. If you are looking to add more outdoor lighting surrounding your property, you will want to call on a professional. While you could attempt to do it yourself, dealing with the electrical elements can be risky. Not doing it properly can put your entire home in danger. That’s why it’s always recommended to let the professionals handle it. Hiring someone with experience will ensure you can get professional help to get the best results out of your outdoor lighting additions.

Here are some of the main things you should be considering when you are attempting to hire the right lighting expert in Houston, TX. You want to keep some of these qualities in mind when you are interviewing the different lighting designers.

1. Knowledge

One of the main things you should be looking for would be a lighting expert that has a lot of knowledge about the different options available. Choose someone well aware of the different fixtures available to use and the different brands or materials that would work the best. You want to ask all of the questions you have to ascertain their knowledge of the marketplace and the industry. They should be able to give you pertinent advice that you can use to figure out what would work best for your needs.

2. Licensing & Insurance

Another thing that you should be looking for when hiring someone would be whether or not they have the requisite licensing and insurance to protect yourself. You need to identify someone who is licensed by the state of Texas to properly protect yourself.

3. Do They Listen?

When you are doing your interview, you want to ensure they are taking the time to listen to what you are saying. Some experts may attempt to tell you what to do without even listening to what you have to say. You want someone who is going to take your opinion into account to ensure they are going to be able to deliver on your expectations. You also want them to listen and adhere to your budget restrictions.

4. Passion

You should be looking for someone who has a lot of passion for what they are doing. You want to find a lighting designer who is excited about the prospect of working with you. You can generally tell if someone is passionate about it by looking at their body language and their facial expressions.

5. Prideful

You want to figure out whether or not your lighting designer offers various references without you even asking them. If they can show you previous work they have completed that matches what you are looking for, it can make your decision a much easier one. You want to find someone who takes pride in his or her work to ensure you are hiring someone who is going to be excited to deliver results exceeding your expectations.

6. Reliability

You need to find a lighting designer who is willing to communicate with you consistently. You also want to hire someone who is going to arrive when they say they will and who is going to finish the job on time.

7. Warranty Or Guarantee

You want to find a lighting designer that is willing and able to offer a guarantee on their services. That way, you know that you are hiring someone who takes pride enough to take care of you if something happens in the future.

If you would like to discover more tips and tricks from Robert Huff Illuminationsvisit our blogCall or contact us today if you need a professional lighting designer for your outdoor lighting design.

The Benefits Of Landscape Lighting & Garden Lights In Houston Pt 2

Top 5 Reasons To Install Houston Landscape Lighting & Use Garden Lights

Part 2

3. Enhance Your Property’s Curb Appeal

Believe it or not, something as simple as outdoor lighting can help to enhance your property’s curb appeal and its overall value. After all, a home that looks appealing will be perceived to be worth more. Thus, it can present a good return on your investment beyond the other benefits you can get from it. In fact, according to the National Association of Home Builders, as many as 41 percent of prospective buyers categorize outdoor lighting as an essential quality for their future home. Likewise, 49 percent of prospective home buyers rated it as something that is a desirable quality for their future home. By using strategy and placing the lights around your yard, you should be able to boost the aesthetics of your home by a significant amount. A lot of designers use specific techniques like the moonlight effect which uses soft ‘moon-like’ lighting to illuminate the space without being too harsh.

4. Enhance The Safety Of Your Property

Outdoor lighting is not only beautiful and good for the curb appeal of your home, but it can even improve the safety of your home. After all, it can help to illuminate walkways making it much easier to get around your property without tripping in the dark. Likewise, it can help to minimize the chances you have others like delivery people getting hurt while on your property. With proper use of outdoor lighting, you can keep your family much safer while enjoying the yard when it’s dark outside.

5. Deter Crime

Another major benefit that can come from adding lighting to your home has to be its ability to deter crime. In fact, according to a lot of sources, one of the most common threats to your home is a burglary. These occur as much as every 13 seconds in the United States. By using floodlights, you can brighten up the area surrounding your property. Not only will this make any guests you are entertaining much more comfortable to be around your property, but it can deter trespassing. It can even decrease the attractiveness of your home to prospective burglars since your home will be adequately lit. If you don’t want your home to be constantly lit due to fears of having sky-high utility bills, you can use lights that have built-in motion sensors so they only get triggered when they detect motion. You will even be able to get outdoor lights with timer functionality which can help disguise your absence when on vacation.

Hire A Professional!

If you want to begin a brand new landscape lighting project to enhance your home for these reasons, you will want to hire a professional. There are so many benefits of investing in outdoor lighting as it can provide a quick and immediate return on investment through boosting your home’s curb appeal and by providing your family with all kinds of other benefits. If you are looking to get started with highlighting your home’s beautiful lawn, garden, and other features with outdoor lighting in the Greater Houston area, call us today! We are awaiting your call to provide you with ideas on how we can help along with a completely free estimate to get started. Missed the first issue of this article? Click here!

The Benefits Of Landscape Lighting & Garden Lights In Houston Pt 1

Top 5 Reasons To Install Houston Landscape Lighting & Use Garden Lights

Part 1

Your home is something that you take pride in maintaining. While you may think your work is done after you’ve planted all of your flower beds and laid down your lawn, there is much more to do. One of the best ways to enhance the overall look and feel of your yard is by adding landscape lighting and garden lights. Doing these things can help you make your home feel much safer, as well. You should be looking to consider adding outdoor lighting to your next landscaping project to get your yard feeling cozy and looking beautiful. Below, you will find some of the greatest benefits of investing in professional landscape lighting.

Here are some of the best benefits of adding professional landscape lighting:

1. Illuminate Your Space

Believe it or not, but your living room doesn’t have to be the space in and around your home where you spend all of your time. You can spend a lot of time outdoors with your friends and family with an ideal setup. Your patio and your backyard present plenty of space which makes it an optimal space to host guests, barbecues, and spend more time with your kids outdoors. Adding more professional outdoor lighting can illuminate your patio and yard no matter if you are looking to enjoy the sunshine with your kids or read a book underneath the moonlight. There are even outdoor lights that you can install that have a dim feature allowing you to adjust the level of practical lighting whether you need it for playing with your kids at night or if you are looking to enjoy a glass of wine in a romantic setting. You will find these lights available in all kinds of different designs and even shapes. Therefore, you should be able to find the right set of lights that can accentuate your outdoor space properly.

2. Highlight Your Decor

By utilizing the right outdoor lighting throughout your patio and yard, you will be able to leverage the lighting to highlight a lot of the features that your yard has. You can do things like guide visitors to your front door or even light up the walkways to enhance safety. You will even be able to utilize this type of lighting to illuminate your property lines to ensure people know where your property ends. These lights can be a great way to showcase your yard and display it in its ‘best light.’ You can strategically place all of your lights around the features you want to highlight whether it’s a water fountain or a specific bush or tree.

For instance, by using these lights in and around your flower beds, you should be able to showcase the beauty of the flowers which can improve the aesthetics of your garden even at night. You can even utilize overhead lighting for porches or incorporate them on staircases. You can even use statement lights which can help you create the right mood or even themed lights if you are looking to accentuate your beachfront property.

If you would like to discover more tips and tricks from Robert Huff Illuminationsvisit our blogCall or contact us today if you need a professional lighting designer for your outdoor lighting design. Please click here for the rest of this article.

Lighting Designers In Houston: Why They Are Badly Needed? Part 2

The Cost & Payback Of A Skilled Lighting Services In Houston

As a profession, architectural lighting design has proven to be successful due to the numerous solid answers to this particular question: Why would an owner or architect pay to get lighting design services whereas it can be done by a salesperson or in the house at no extra cost? The charge fee for a lighting designer is tough to justify when the value and extent of the services rendered aren’t recognized. However, those architects and owners who have gained from independent and skillful lighting design understand there are short and long-term paybacks outweighing the fee. Lighting designers can be a value-added and unique resource. In most cases, a lighting designer will minimize project construction and operation cost. Here are some instances where this is demonstrated repeatedly.

1. Equipment Cost Control

Lighting designers can give a design meeting a set budget but will be more useful when planning the budget. They will choose equipment from various manufacturers to assist in keeping bids competitive and make recommendations on lighting techniques or equipment to help in reducing installation costs. Their presence will only encourage competition. But some lighting fixtures are ‘one of a kind’ in which case the price can be acquired directly from the manufacturer. To identify gross anomalies, the unit pricing obtained during the design development can be compared to the unit pricing the bidding contractors give. The design might also recommend distributors for them to get additional competitive bids. Lastly, the lighting designer will work alongside the owner’s representative and contractor(s) to attain budget goals without sacrificing the design.

2. Operations Cost Control

Minimizing the operations costs the owner may prove to be an integral part of design decisions with such measures benefitting the project practically and aesthetically. Lifecycle cost evaluation compares the Return On Initial Investment of different technologies or techniques. Usually, costs can be mitigated if the space isn’t over-lighted. Over-lighting can occur if the specifier utilizes rote horizontal footcandle prescriptions or does not understand visuals and task issues of the project. Many a time, the specifier is dependent on recommendations from the equipment’s salespersons. There are hundreds of ways a pro designer can minimize costs and improve the project in general. Enhancing the reflectance of surfaces can assist in reducing operating costs and lighting equipment. Selective spotlighting is essential to retail sales. Incorporating daylight with electric lighting will save on energy and offer a satisfying connection to the world.

3. People Costs

Light quality impacts people on a variety of levels. New studies suggest that lighting affects safety and security, retail sales, wayfinding, and the productivity of employees. Professional lighting designers are conversant with such issues and the methods needed to achieve those results. The cost incurred for poor lighting that just meets the standard code simply isn’t worth it in locations where the ‘people factor’ is key.

4. Aesthetic Costs

Skills can easily be acquired and learned, whereas talent cannot. Architects are fully aware of how the value-adder for creative and brilliant design is challenging to evaluate and is contingent on the decision-maker’s appreciation. Bu the difference a sufficing lighting design and another that brings the architecture to its realization is more or less felt.

If you would like to discover more tips and tricks from Robert Huff Illuminationsvisit our blogCall or contact us today if you need a professional lighting designer with your outdoor lighting design. Missed the first issue of this article? Click here!

Lighting Designers In Houston: Why They Are Badly Needed? Part 1

Knowing Why A Diligent Houston Lighting Designer Is So Essential

When drafting a new project, there are some basic questions that you need to consider and answer, specifically: Is illumination essential to your project? What is defined as good lighting design, and how can it be realized?

Lighting is a technically challenging but astonishing medium that needs mastery of varying and continually evolving disciplines. A lighting design combines the sciences, arts, and illumination business design and implementation far beyond the concerns of horizontal footcandles and visibility.

Lighting designers are part and parcel of the design team and, just like the architects, charge you for services delivered. Expert lighting designers bring to the table solid technical ingenuity and sensitive design methods to landscape and architectural projects. However, the value-added services they offer can make or break the project’s success and, thus, hugely outweigh the impact of their service fee.

A project designer or owner might be oblivious of the benefits an independent lighting consultant has to offer in today’s construction and design processes. For instance: what’s the difference between services delivered by a lighting professional compared to that of an interior designer or electrical engineer? The interior designer’s responsibility was selecting decorative lighting equipment while the electrical engineer was tasked with the lighting since it’s part of the electrical grid. Right? So what has created a profession that solely specializes in the lighting?

1. Technology

Lighting control technologies and equipment are developing at a break-neck speed with hundreds of products getting introduced to the market every year. Lighting professionals should consider attending national trade shows and continuously update product info and samples from various manufacturers. That is if they want to deliver proper design solutions that utilize the newest and most cost-effective technologies. Staying updated with the latest weapons in the lighting armory is time-intensive but has never been more essential. Note that independent lighting consultants don’t install or sell equipment, nor are they dependent on recommendations done by lighting salespersons. Therefore, the client will receive a lighting design based on expertise and research – free from any conflict of interest.

2. Technique

Illumination is architecture’s transient partner. The light remains invisible until it strikes a surface or object. Controlling this difficult, ephemeral medium gives the lighting designer the chance to make dynamics, hierarchies, and mood. Lighting design is a creative extension of the architecture, enhancing visibility and complementing program, form, and color. Talent, coupled together with experience, creates illumination patterns that will support the overall project goals seamlessly.

3. Education

Knowledge of electricity, construction, optics, codes, physics, ergonomics, vision, business, the art of design, and construction are all integral to creating impressive lighting solutions. To deliver the best possible services, lighting pros must generally be well-grounded individuals who constantly educate themselves. They can do this in a variety of ways, including reading journals and trade magazines, networking, attending and presenting seminars. This give-and-take scenario, alongside healthy competition, boosts the profession forward as a whole.

If you would like to discover more tips and tricks from Robert Huff Illuminationsvisit our blogCall or contact us today if you need a professional lighting designer with your outdoor lighting design. For the rest of this article please click here.