December 2, By Abby Lawson 6 Comments. Learn how to install low voltage landscape lighting and give your home's exterior a high-end, custom look! I love to drive through beautiful neighborhoods to check out the homes and get ideas. Recently I was driving around in the evening and realized that just about every home that caught my eye had lighting that illuminated their landscaping and gave a gorgeous soft glow to the house.
When I pointed this out to Donnie, he was totally on board with doing something similar for our home. And since he took this project and ran with it, I'm going to let him explain how to install low voltage landscape lighting for your own home! A few months ago Abby came to me with the idea of installing landscape lighting in the front of our house. I love the finished and classy look of landscape lighting, but I assumed it was a difficult and expensive project.
It turns out that installing low voltage landscape lighting is easier and cheaper than I thought, and it makes a huge impact on the look of our home after the sun goes down. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here. Low voltage lighting uses a transformer to reduce normal volt lines to a lower voltage.
For landscape lighting, this is typically 24 or 12 volts. The most common low voltage landscape lighting transformers reduce the voltage to 12 volts, which is what we used. The first step when installing low voltage landscape lighting is deciding on your layout.
Abby and I decided to only install the landscape lighting in the front of the house. Abby then mapped out approximately where she would like lights and how many.
It was helpful to look at pictures online to get a better feel for how closely spaced or spread out the lights should be. Ultimately, we decided to use seven lights for the size and layout of our house.
Once we figured out where we wanted the lights, we also had to make a note of where we had available outdoor electrical outlets to be able to plug in our transformer s.
In our case, we had one electrical outlet just to the left of our front door and one outlet on each side of the house that we could potentially use. In the image above, the pink boxes represent the locations of the outlets and the yellow circles represent where we planned to put the lights. Ideally one transformer would cover all of our needs. We would plug in a transformer to outdoor outlets and run a line of all our lights from there.
Because of those limitations, we realized we would need three separate transformers. Unfortunately, the transformers are the most expensive part of the entire process, but there was little we could do about it.
The light in zone one would plug into a transformer on the left side of our house. The lights in zone two would plug into a transformer by the front door. And the lights in zone three would plug into a transformer on the right side of our house. Purchasing all of the necessary equipment for this project was the most overwhelming part. There are just so many choices and options that it can be confusing at first. The first thing I did was take a look at low voltage lighting options on Amazon. While it was helpful to see all of the different lighting options in person to get a better idea of what we needed, the Portfolio brand didn't seem like it was a higher quality than other brands we had looked at, and the prices were definitely higher than what I was seeing on Amazon.
So after weighing our options, we ultimately decided to purchase our equipment from Diy Low Voltage Landscaping Lights 30 Amazon, and we've been very happy with that decision. Transformers will be the biggest cost of this project. Zone 1: 1 7 watt light x 1. Zone 2: 2 7 watt lights x 1.
And Zone 3: 4 7 watt lights x 1. Keep in mind that wattage requirements are bare minimum. If you start to get close to the transformer's capacity, you may notice a drop in brightness of your lights.
Most people recommend getting transformers that will provide enough power and room for expansion in the future. For our project, I purchased two 45 watt transformers and one watt transformer, which was more than enough for what we needed. After looking at low voltage landscape light transformers on Amazon and reading reviews, I knew that I wanted transformers that looked nice, were weatherproof, included a photo sensor so the lights could turn on at night on their own, and also have a timer option to manually set when the lights would go on and off.
I decided on Malibu brand transformers. They have 45, , , , , and watt options. We purchase two 45 watt transformers and one watt transformer. The price was much better and the lights Low Voltage Landscape Lights Ac Or Dc Power had everything we needed. We also decided to purchase spotlights as opposed to flood lights.
I think this gives the nicest effect of shining up on the side of house. A bunch of floodlights shining up on the house may have overwhelmed everything. I was really happy with the quality of our lights. They seem very sturdy and well made with heavy duty stakes, an angle adjustment knob, and metal light bodies. The lights are a matte black color, which blends in well during the daytime and is hardly noticeable.
We bought the 8 pack of lights but only ended up using seven for our layout. Before purchasing our wire , I used a tape measure to get a very rough estimate of how much wire I would need. I wanted to make sure I had extra, so I purchased feet of wire. The first number is the gauge of wire. For example, 12 gauge wire is thicker than 14 gauge wire. The second number is the number of strands of wire in the cable.
For low voltage landscape lighting, you will need two strands. As a general rule, the thicker the wire lower gauge the less voltage will drop over long distances. But even with 14 gauge wire, there will be no significant voltage loss unless you start getting out to wire lengths over feet. There are also some wattage considerations when choosing your wire.
Every online source lists slightly different numbers, but if you are going to run close to watts or more, 14 gauge wire may be too small. I ended up purchasing the 14 gauge wire because some Amazon reviewers had commented that the lights we purchased used 14 gauge wire. For the vast majority of residential landscape lighting projects, 14 gauge or 12 gauge will work just fine.
The last thing you need for this project are the wire connectors. Fortunately, they are cheap, and there are plenty of options. The wire connectors are used to connect the two short wire strands that extend from each light to the long wire that provides power to all of the lights in the strand. The basic design of most connectors is really innovative. The long wire is slid into a wire holder on the connector, and then you tighten down the connector and the metal prongs tap directly into your long wire.
The first type requires two connectors for each light. The second type requires just a single connector for each light because one connector utilizes both strands of the wire. The second type can accommodate gauge wire with the included and differently sized inserts.
We were good to go with our 14 gauge wire, and the connects fit perfectly. For our project, I ended up using the second type. To be honest, we spent more time researching and buying the equipment than we spent installing the lights.
The installation is the easy part! Here are the steps we used:. We had already thought through our general lighting layout, but on installation day Abby placed each light in the rough final location. She just lightly stuck each light into the ground with the attached stakes. We used three transformers, but we did this step one at a time.
Then we inserted the bare wire into the slot on the transformer and used a screwdriver to tighten the little metal screws on the back of the transformer that clamp down on the wire. Remember: with low voltage landscape lighting, there is no polarity.
No need to worry about positive and negative wires. For two of our transformer locations, we were able to use some siding clips that Abby had from another project to hang the transformers. I had never used siding clips before, but I was surprised how strong they are. The alternative would be to use a masonry bit and screw directly into the brick or stone on the house. We avoided this with the siding clips.
Our third transformer is on our porch. We decided to not attach it to the house but just hide it behind one of our planters. We began to uncoil the wire and lay it on the ground, connecting all of our lights. Then I twisted the copper wire slightly to keep all of the tiny strands together. I opened up the connector 1 , then placed the long main wire into the connector 2. I placed the piece of the connector with the prongs 3 on top of the other connector piece 4.
Then I tightened down on the connector knob so that the prongs would tap into the wire 5. Once the connector was properly attached to the main wire, we depressed the two tiny buttons on the top of the connector and slid in the two strands from the light.
Once all of the lights were connected to the main wire, we pushed them all into the ground so they were firmly rooted and wouldn't move anywhere. Once the lights were wired correctly and positioned, we turned on each transformer and made sure that all of the lights were working properly.
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