Lighting & devices
Outdoor and landscape lighting in Woodside, NY
Outdoor lighting fails in two ways: it stops working because it was not wired for weather, or it works far too well and turns your yard into a car park. Both are avoidable at the design stage.
A stoop, a path, a side alley, a back yard, a party wall and a garage door are six different lighting problems. The stoop needs to be safe and welcoming. The path needs to show you where the step is. The yard wants to look like somewhere you would sit in the evening. The garage door needs enough light to find a keyhole and no more.
Solving all six with two floodlights on a motion sensor is what most Queens houses have, and it is why so many back yards are unusable after dark: a bright light and deep shadow around it is worse than no light at all.
Wiring for weather, which is the whole job
Outdoors, water is the adversary and it is patient. Everything is weather-rated: fittings, boxes, and in-use covers on receptacles that stay weatherproof with a plug in them rather than only when empty. Cable is rated for burial and buried at the right depth, in conduit where it needs protection. Every outdoor receptacle is on ground-fault protection, without exception.
Terminations are made so that water cannot track into them, and fittings are mounted so that the entry is not the lowest point. That last detail is why so much outdoor lighting fails after three years — not the fitting, the way it was hung.
Low-voltage systems are a good answer for planting and paths: safer to run through a garden, easier to alter later, and no buried mains cable to worry about the next time somebody digs.
Aiming it so the neighbours do not hate you
In Woodside the houses are close together and your yard light is somebody's bedroom window. Glare and spill are the difference between lighting that looks expensive and lighting that starts a dispute.
That means shielded fittings, aimed downward, mounted lower than instinct suggests, and using several small sources rather than one bright one. It also means controls: a path scheme on a timer or photocell at low level, with the brighter security lighting on a motion sensor that spends most of the night off. A floodlight that is on all night is not security — it just makes the shadows darker.
Included as standard
What the job actually includes
A scheme, not a pair of floodlights
Stoop, path, yard, alley and garage treated as the different problems they are.
Weather-rated throughout
Fittings, boxes and in-use covers that stay weatherproof with something plugged in.
Ground-fault protection on everything outdoors
Without exception.
Buried cable done properly
Rated cable, correct depth, conduit where it needs protection, and recorded so the next person knows.
Shielded and aimed
So it lights your garden and not your neighbour's bedroom.
Controls that make sense
Photocell or timer for the low-level scheme, motion for the bright stuff. Not everything on all night.
When to call us
Signs this is the job you need
- One bright floodlight and a yard full of shadow
- Outdoor fittings that have filled with water or stopped working
- An outdoor receptacle with no cover, or no ground-fault protection
- A dark path or stoop with a step in it
- A neighbour who has mentioned your security light
- A garden or a deck you would use in the evening if you could see
Outdoor and landscape lighting — what it costs
- A stoop and path scheme through to a full garden layout.$980 – $6,500
This is the range this job actually lands in, not a headline figure. The low end is a straightforward version of the work; the high end is one with a hard access problem, an old service, or something that has to be opened up before anybody can be certain. We tell you which one you have after we have looked, and the written quote says where the price could still move and why.
Questions we are actually asked
Outdoor lighting — frequently asked
Will this run up my bill?
Barely. A well-designed low-voltage garden scheme is a few tens of watts, which is less than a single old floodlight. If you want the arithmetic on your own rate we will do it, and it is usually a smaller number than people expect.
Can you bury the cable under my paving?
Yes, and it should be done at the right depth with the right cable, in conduit where it could be disturbed. We record the routes so the next person to dig knows where it is — which is the part that most often gets skipped and most often causes trouble.
Are solar lights any good?
For marking a path edge, some of them are fine and we will happily tell you to buy those instead of hiring us. For anything you actually need to see by, or anything you want to still be working in three winters, no.
Related work
Often needed alongside this
Lighting design
Deciding where light should fall before anybody cuts a hole in your ceiling. Usually fewer fittings, not more.
$650 – $2,400
New circuits
A circuit for the window unit, the home office, the dryer or the workshop — run properly, rather than spurred off something.
$420 – $1,300
Grounding & bonding
The part of your system that does nothing at all until the day it is the only thing between you and a fault.
$285 – $2,200
Recessed & LED
Downlights set out on a grid that suits the room, and honest arithmetic on what a retrofit saves.
$210 – $390Somebody who does the work will come and look
Book a visit
Telephone the shop and you will get an electrician rather than a call centre. For defined work — a panel, a charger, a lighting scheme — the quote is free. For a fault, the visit is the diagnosis and it is $165 for the first hour, credited against the work if you go ahead the same visit. Either way we will tell you on the telephone which one it is.