Sumerian Irrigation - Landscape Lighting

Landscape Lighting offers an incredible expansion of the enjoyment of both residential and commercial properties. It makes outdoor spaces usable at night and adds a magical view into the landscape from interior spaces. Through skill and thorough planning, Sumerian can create a "lighting portrait" for your home or business. The overall lighting scheme is designed to enhance your landscape by highlighting its natural beauty, not by drawing attention to the bulbs and fixtures themselves.
When designing a landscape lighting scheme, we use 12 volt fixtures on residential properties (as opposed to 120 volts) for several reasons. Small-scale, low-voltage fixtures are safer and cost less to operate. They can be easily hidden in planting beds and trees as well as integrated into structures. Conduit is not required for the cables, saving on the cost of materials. Fixtures can be stake-mounted providing movement of fixtures as the landscape changes. A wide variety of low voltage lamps are available for your choice.

Four issues direct the selection of the appropriate lighting for a specimen, or a point of interest: the desired effect, the purpose the lighting effect serves in the composition, the direction of light, and fixture location. These issues can be directed by the following techniques:

• Frontlighting starts to show or create shape, ties areas of a composition together and provides detail and color to the view of a plant. It can also reduce or emphasize texture based on fixture distance from the plant.
• Sidelighting emphasizes texture on plants and creates shadows on either vertical or horizontal adjacent surfaces.
• Uplighting creates dramatic effects on plants - a glowing effect, shadows on a vertical surface and creating a halo are a few of them.
• Downlighting can provide a natural appearance if it follows the direction of the sun. It can provide strong accent lighting or soft fill light, accentuate detail and color, and offer a moonlight effect.
• Pathlighting is used primarily to create a symmetrical pattern of light for navigation. Fully shielded fixtures may be positioned along landscape cutouts and pathways to add safety, security, and visibility at night.

Lighting has the ability to transform a space, create an emotional response or simply make your environment more comfortable. It offers security and additional time to enjoy your surroundings while bringing an entirely new look to your landscape after the sun goes down. Let Sumerian create a lighting portrait for you.