Beautified and Secured After Full Outdoor Lighting Installation
Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote “More and more, so it seems to me, light is the beautifier of buildings.” Outdoor lighting enhances the beauty of a property, increases its curb appeal, and improves its security.
As a licensed electrician in San Antonio, we provide custom exterior lighting solutions on patios, driveways, front porches, front walls, entrance doors and security doors, driveway gates, fences, property periphery, etc.
Unlike their landscape lighting fixtures, homeowners prefer their outdoor lighting fixtures to be visible. Your selection of fixtures, the type of lighting technology, and your choice of color determine how the architectural characteristics of your property are highlighted.
All Star Electric San Antonio installs any outdoor lighting project you have, and advises you from the very beginning of the project until you achieve the desired design effect.
Additionally, we install outdoor safety lighting to illuminate all zones around your property and add an extra layer of safety when you enter or exit it, and when you secure it at night.
Types of outdoor lighting fixtures
Patios
Industrial pendant lights and LED globe string lights provide both ambient and task lighting. Pendant lights offer focused illumination for dining tables; globe string lights create an inviting atmosphere.
Driveways & Front Gates
Low-voltage pathway lights and floodlights can serve to illuminate a driveway and secure the approach to your home. Pathway lights offer a guiding light along the driveway, enhancing both safety and visibility against wildlife if you live in areas around San Antonio where snakes, spiders and rodents are commonplace.
We often propose to use floodlights to illuminate the driveway area close to the garage door as a security measure and to improve security camera footage.
If your driveway gate is impressive, we can install accent lights to highlight its most striking features at night.
Front Porches
Wall lanterns and gooseneck lights are great fixtures to light up a front porch. Wall lanterns provide a welcoming glow to the porch area and make it into an inviting entrance. Gooseneck lights highlight architectural features and signage. You can light up a “Beware of Dog” sign, for instance. You can also accentuate the vertical lines of the façade, an outdoor lighting trick to make a home appear bigger than it actually is.
Front Walls & Entrance Doors
Directional up lights and down lights will accentuate the important features of your façade and your entrance door. Up-lights typically illuminate the façade from below. Strategically placed down-lights create a dramatic effect from a second floor, a door lintel, or a roof line.
Security Doors & Windows
Security doors and windows are a deterrent to burglars, but their usefulness as a security deterrent decreases at night if they are in the dark. To keep them visible and deter intrusions as far back as the boundaries of the property, illuminate them from dusk till dawn.
To this intent, spotlights are a good solution to focus light on these features without flooding your entire front yard or driveway. Well-lit security structures around your windows and doors spell out “home difficult to break in” to potential intruders, keeping them effectively at arm’s length.
Of course, we can also install motion sensors to illuminate more areas in a surprising way, a situation in which thieves never want to find themselves. Outdoor lighting is not just beautification.
Fences
Wall lights attached to fence posts provide a continuous light source along the boundaries of your property. Step lights are useful where there are elevation changes near the front gate: they highlight tripping hazards.
Property Periphery & Depth of Field
We typically use in-ground well lights to uplight trees or architectural elements along the property’s edge and well inside the perimeter to create depth of field, a design trick to make your property look “more 3D”. We place floodlights strategically for a broader illumination in larger yards, and to highlight key features of the property and make it stand out in the neighborhood.
Outdoor Lighting Installation: Role of the Electrical Contractor
Planning
As electrical contractors in San Antonio, we typically start working with homeowners from the planning stage of the outdoor lighting layout. During the first phase of a project, we consider all aspects of a property, including its topography and its current electrical installation. We listen carefully to what the homeowners have in mind and what they want to achieve. We talk about budgetary constraints.
Calculating
Then we start designing a system that matches and improves on the original ideas. During this design phase, we will perform the calculations necessary to understand if the existing service panel and circuits of the property can support the power load of the outdoor lighting installation.
Sourcing
We present various fixtures that could fit the project, both in terms of style and in terms of function. We research manufacturers’ catalogs and offer a diversity of choices to the homeowners, in accordance with their budget and tastes. At this stage, we have a full calculation of the power demand of the outdoor lighting system, and if applicable, we recommend the service panel upgrades necessary to absorb the additional load.
Approvals & Building
If you live in an HOA with strict remodeling rule, we probably will have to present your outdoor lighting project to the HOA for approval.
Once every approval is secured, we start building the system. To reduce any type of inconvenience, we act within a certain calendar previously established with you. We seek to minimize interruptions in your home routines, and create as little disturbance as possible outside of your property. HOA rules usually require contractors to work within certain hours of the day and week.
Once we complete the major installation work, we clean up the site and tune up the system.
Testing & Inspection
If some lighting options work on a timer, we set up the timer according to your instructions. We will also fully test the outdoor lighting system in several different scenarios. Also, depending on where you live, you may have to have a city inspector perform a final inspection for certification. Certification of our work is never an issue, so this formality should be quick and easy. Your HOA may also want to confirm that the system is installed according to approved plans.
Delivery
At this point, we show you how everything works, and give you a document describing each area of the system, how to turn it on/off, how to change the timer, and the technical specifications of your installation. A final detail clean-up concludes our intervention.
Why Choose All Star Electric San Antonio as Your Electrical Contractor
Operating as licensed electricians in San Antonio for almost 30 years, we have worked on thousands and thousands of new electrical installations, remodeled the electricals of countless homes, and upgraded outdated installations almost every single week of our existence. We have a long experience of outdoor lighting installations.
In all these years, we have built and kept a clean reputation as electrical contractors in our city. A member of the Better Business Bureau since 2009, we have had a single strike on our name, and kept an A+ rating. Our clients gave us good reviews in Google and other contractor sites. Thirty years is a very long time in the construction business, and we are no fly-by-night company.
We offer a 2-year guarantee on our labor: that duration is longer than the typical guarantee of an electrical contractor, and by this statement, we mean to show we stand by our work and want you to have peace of mind.
Lastly, but this is important in the times we live in, our labor rates are fair.
If you are thinking about getting an outdoor lighting installation completed on your property, call us at 210-391-0274 to discuss your project and start receiving reliable pointers and a cost estimate.
We serve San Antonio, Helotes, Castle Hills, San Antonio Heights, and Selma in priority.
Additional Resource
We also offer landscape lighting services.
