Twilight Low Voltage Outdoor Lighting

There are two main aspects to consider when you are planning twilight low voltage outdoor lighting:

1. The aesthetics of the lighting- what you are going to light, what types of landscape lights, what the lighting is designed to highlight
2. B) The practical issues – how many lighting fixtures you’ll need, where they will be sited, what the total wattage of the installation will be, what wattage transformers you’ll need, where the transformers will be sited, where the cables will run

Planning Steps:

1. Using a Bird’s-Eye-View, sketch your home and grounds, including features such as deck, fence, shrubs, trees, etc. in scale. Ideally use a large piece of graph paper where each block on the paper represents dimension proportional to the size of your property e.g. 4′ x 4′, 10′ x 10′ (the scale depends on the size of your property).
2. Choose the aspects of your property that you want to landscape lighting to highlight. These could be an attractive tree, interesting aspect of your home, a garden feature etc. We suggest you limit the highlights to no more than two for an average-sized property.
3. The other lighting fixtures should be used as background or safety lighting e.g. path lights, step lighting or as lower key accents.
4. Choose the outdoor lighting fixtures e.g. accent/spot lights path lights for each location and mark them on the plan. A word of caution – the normal tendency is to over-light by installing too many fixtures.
5. You now need to calculate the total wattage of the planned lighting system by adding up the wattages of every light on your plan. We suggest that you divide the lighting into several areas, each with its own transformer. This gives you flexibility in upgrading/changing the lighting system and also usually reduces cable lengths, because you can site a transformer closer to each area.
6. When selecting transformers to meet the demands of the total wattage for each area, make sure you buy a transformer with more capacity needed, to cover changes and upgrades. A good rule of thumb is to choose a transformer 50% to 75% bigger than the total wattage of the lights.
7. Now use the plan to estimate how much cable you will need. For a system or lighting area that totals less than 200 watts, use 14-gauge cable. For a system/area over 200 watts, you need 12-gauge cable.
8. Select the control option your lights. The most popular choices are timers or a photo-sensor that turns on the lights automatically at dusk. Alternatively you can use a simple on/off switch.
9. Select the location for the transformer(s). When using an outdoor receptacle, hang the transformer at least 12″ above the ground. Attach cable and adjust the timer or photo control (this will need to set to account for local artificial light levels).
10. Lay out the light fixtures at locations according to the plan (use the graph paper to check distances/locations are correct).