Lighting

Hinkley Lighting Offers Numerous Choices For Illuminating Your Landscape

Hinkley Lighting has been blending function and design to create quality lighting products since 1922. Both interior and exterior designers repeatedly recommend Hinkley to their discriminating clients. Hinkley prides themselves on their superior customer service. By knowing what their customers want when it comes to their home lighting, they can help you achieve any lighting design you can envision.

Landscape lighting can make your home safer and more secure for both your family and your visitors. By drawing your eye outward, you can blur the lines between your indoor and outdoor living spaces, making the transition seamless. When your outdoor spaces feel more like an addition to your home, you’ll find yourself spending as much time as possible enjoying them.

Luxurious landscape lighting used to be available only to those in the upper income brackets. Now the stylish outdoor living trend has spread to every budget range. New all-weather furniture, appliances and fabrics are available in a broad range of styles and prices. And the lighting options have evolved at the same pace. It is easier than ever to create a the ideal outdoor living space where you will want to spend as much time as possible.

Along with beautifying your outdoor space, you’ll be helping the environment when you choose Hinkley lighting fixtures. They have a line of Energy Star qualified lighting that produces a bright light with about 75 percent less energy than regular lights. They also produce less heat and the bulbs last 10 times longer, too. They accomplish this with GU24 sockets and self-ballasted compact fluorescent bulbs. Their light fixtures also include a photocell that turns the light off during the day, adding to your energy savings and simplifying the installation, since a separate switch and timer are not needed.

Hinkley Dark Sky Light

Hinkley Dark Sky Light - click for more info

Another eco-friendly option is Hinkley’s Dark Sky fixtures that not only save energy with their fluorescent technology, but also have a special reflectors and design features that either minimize or totally eliminate the light’s upward glare in the night sky. These fixtures meet California’s “Title-24″ requirements.

Hinkley offers a diverse range of landscape lighting. They offer more than 70 choices in Post Lights alone. The finishes available include: Aged Brass, Aged Iron with Antique Copper Highlights, Antique Copper, Black, Black Granite and Buckeye Bronze. With all of these options, you’re sure to be able to find the perfect light for your situation.

You’ll find 7 different spot lights in 2 finishes, Bronze and Natural Copper. Looking for deck or step lights? Hinkley has 10 versions to choose from. They have no less than 40 styles of pathway lights. Now you can get creative and show off your artistic side, while illuminating your landscape and making your home safer and more eco-friendly at the same time.
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How To Choose A Transformer For Low Voltage Garden Lighting

When you start shopping for garden lighting, one of the first terms that you run into is low voltage. This simply means that you will be using less electricity (voltage) to operate your lights, in most cases, only 12 volts. Since your house is wired for 120 volts, you can’t just plug in the low voltage lights to your regular outlet, you need a “transformer” to reduce the 120 volts you have to the 12 volts you need. It sounds much more complicated than it really is.

A Kit Will Come With The Proper Size Transformer

When you buy alow voltage garden lighting kit, it will contain the proper sized transformer for that set of lights. But what if you want to connect more then one set, or if you want to put together a custom set? Many times, a kit will contain a number of pathway lights and possibly one or two spotlights. If your driveway or walkway is longer than normal, or if you want to add step lights or extra spotlights, you are going to need a larger transformer to handle the extra load.

A Transformer Is An Electronic Device That Adjusts The Voltage Of Your House Current

The transformer is actually an inverter, an electronic device that plugs into your 120 volt house current and steps it down to 12 volts. The wiring for your low voltage lights will either plug in to the transformer box or you will need to wrap the wires around a couple of screws. Either option is simple and your transformer will come with easy to follow instructions.

Landscape Lighting Kit

Landscape Lighting Kit - Click for more info

Simple Math Will Help You Pick The Right Transformer

If you are creating your own system from scratch, or adding to an existing kit, you will need to do some simple math to figure out which size of transformer to buy. The packaging will tell you how many watts each light uses, so you multiply the watts of each light times the number of lights, then add about 25% of that total for the wire. For example, say you are using 10 lights that are 12 watts each: 10 x 12 = 120. Then we add approximately 25% for the wiring: 120 x .25 = 30. The original 120 watts, plus the 30 watts that we will lose in the length of the wire tells us that we need a transformer that will handle at least 150 watts. If you come up with an odd number, always round up. You never want to overload a transformer and purchasing one larger than you need leaves you plenty of leeway should you decide to add to your system later on.

Don’t Cut Corners When Dealing With Electricity

As a final note, do not skip the step of adding 25% for the wiring. Voltage drops a small amount with every foot of wire, meaning you won’t have as much electricity at the end of your wire as you do at the beginning. Not having enough electricity to operate properly can cause flickering and shorten the life of your bulbs, so make sure you remember this very important step when choosing the transformer for your low voltage garden lighting.

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Extend Your Outdoor Living Space With Patio Lighting

With patio lighting, you can decorate your patio for any special occasion quickly and inexpensively. There are so many different varieties available that finding one you like is not difficult. More likely, you will have so many choices that it is hard to pick just one.

Like having holiday lights year-round

Patio lighting is similar to strings of Christmas lights but rather than having an exposed bulb, they have decorative plastic covers over the bulbs. Most strands are 12 to 17 feet long, and have lights every 10-12 inches. Most will also have a few feet of “lead” wire to reach from your outlet to your roof or wherever you are hanging the lights.

Think Safety First when dealing with anything electrical

Always think of safety first and make sure that the lights you are considering are rated for outdoor use. And if you plan to connect multiple strands together, you will need to make sure that you are not creating a fire hazard by overloading your electrical circuits.

Inexpensive enough to change for every occasion

With prices most places between 10 and 20 dollars per strand, you can have a different set of lights for every season and every holiday. For spring & summer, there are flip-flops or you can create a beach atmosphere with sailboats and pink flamingos. There are bright colored leaves and turkeys for the fall. For your Fourth of July party, you can decorate with bright red, white and blue flags.

String Lighting

String Lighting - click for more info

You can find lights to match any theme

If you are having a birthday party, you’re sure to find patio lights to match the honoree’s hobbies or interests. All types of sports-related lights are available or turn your patio into the wild, wild, west for your little cowboy or cowgirl. Every kind of zoo animal you can imagine is available, as are a dozen or more types of fish or fishing-related lights. You can even get a strand of Airstream camper lights for the vagabond.

Create a romantic atmosphere for a wedding party

If there is a wedding in your future, you can create a romantic setting easily by using strands of patio lights with white paper globes. Intersperse the paper globes with traditional white twinkle lights for an atmosphere that is perfect for romance.

Patio lights are versatile enough to decorate anything

You also have many choices when deciding where to place your lights. Around the edge of the roof is the most common place, with stringing them through the lower branches of the trees coming in a close second. Awnings, patio umbrellas, gazebos, and arbors are also popular places to use patio lights. If your patio roof has support columns, you can wrap strands of lights around the columns. You can outline the railing. This is especially effective if you have a distinctive design, like a starburst in your rails.

String Lights

String Lighting - click for more info

Indulge your creative side

If you have a large blank wall available, you can temporarily attach the patio lights to the wall in a pattern. Write your name, draw a Christmas tree or a star in lights. Outline a palm tree design for a beach theme party. Make a bell shape for a wedding. Their flexible nature makes patio lighting a natural for getting creative.

Set the mood for a party or just liven up a cozy evening at home

Patio lights can help you create whatever atmosphere you need, whether it is cheerful, romantic, or whimsical. They are a fast, easy and economical way to liven up your next outdoor party.

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The Advantages Of Solar Lights For Your Garden Lighting

Solar lights have become much more popular in the last few years. They used to have a reputation as cheap, plastic pieces of junk that didn’t put out much light. Newer technologies in solar cells have increased not only the length of time that they burn, but also the wattage of the bulbs they can power, resulting in light outputs that can match the traditional low-voltage versions.

Longer Lasting And More Powerful Lights

If an area gets several hours of sun each day, it is a candidate for solar lights. Although it varies by the wattage of your bulbs and by your energy storage capacity, 5-7 hours of sun per day should power your lights most of the night. Most companies will make this information available to you either on their packaging or their web sites.

They Don’t Have To Be Located Near An Electrical Outlet

Not having to run wiring for traditional outdoor lighting gives you much more freedom in choosing where to place your lights. You can put them in remote corners that would be difficult to light otherwise. If you have a few acres, the money that you save by not having to buy huge amounts of wire, and the larger transformers necessary for longer runs, will pay for several more light fixtures.

You Can Do It Yourself Without Danger

Solar Security Light

Solar Security Light

With low–voltage landscape lighting, you either have to hire an electrician, or be willing, and able, to make the electrical connections yourself. For some people, this isn’t a problem; they’ll jump right in and learn the wiring aspect without a second thought. Others would never dream of playing with electricity. This isn’t a consideration with solar garden lights. The majority of the lights are a single piece that you either push in the ground or mount on a wall or post. Some of the more sophisticated lights will have a solar cell that is separate from the light itself, but attached by a wire. Even these will come pre-wired and it is just a matter of mounting both pieces.

Solar Lights Are Better For The Environment And Your Wallet

Solar lights will not increase your monthly electric bill. For some, this is the best reason for choosing solar outdoor lighting. Although low-voltage lights don’t use a large amount of electricity, they do use some, and that ultimately shows up on your monthly bill. When you choose solar lights, you are choosing to use a free, renewable, natural resource that helps reduce your overall carbon footprint.

Solar lighting may very well be the easiest way to enhance your landscape, your wallet and your environment all at the same time.

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