Infuse outdoor entertaining with a festive air by garlanding your gazebo, patio awning or deck railings with popular Bulbrite string lighting. It brightens up your outdoor vistas after sunset with the warm glow of vintage elan. Try connecting several strings together to create a border that keeps the dark at bay, or use a single string as a decorative accent in a seating area or your barbecue station. Because it’s so portable and versatile, it’s a great do-it-yourself hack that works in all sorts of settings.

Rope lighting really jazzes up outdoor living space with a minimum of fuss. This kind of string lighting works great in unobtrusive places like below a handrail cap to or around the edge of your deck to frame your spaces with a warm, welcoming glow. If you wish to create a more celebratory vibe, place rope lighting in plain sight like you would holiday lights, encircling structural posts with festive glimmer.

LED strip lighting is another option that saves energy while instilling your outdoor atmosphere with a distinctive verve. LED strips from WAC Lighting and Koncept are rated for use in damp places, as long as they are not exposed to the weather. Get creative with your deck lighting by incorporating strips of various lengths in covered areas like your deck or patio. Use led step lighting from some of our most popular manufacturers, including Kichler and Sea Gull Lighting, to improve visibility as well as aesthetics.

Use light as a medium to paint your landscape and make your carefully manicured plantings and special features pop at night. When you are planning your backyard lighting scheme, be sure to bring some of the following areas into focus:

• Gates and entryways

• Footpaths

• Stairs

• Fountains, waterfalls, ponds

• Statuary

• Seating areas

Solar landscape lights from Kenroy Home cast soft haloes along pathways or beside garden benches, creating an aura of enchantment. You can position solar lights as far from an electric power source as you wish, so they are ideal for the far reaches of your backyard.

Strategically placed spotlights show off your most distinctive flower beds, trees or shrubs to their best advantage while providing attractive pockets of brightness that banish shadowy corners, making your backyard more welcoming. You can also hide spotlights behind shrubbery but aim the light toward the sky, backlighting plantings while illuminating the perimeter of your home or patio. Keep in mind, though, that too much light can be as ineffective as too little. Think Cinderella’s castle rather than Times Square.

When the party is over and it’s time to retire, you can rest easy knowing that your motion sensor lighting is keeping vigil, ready to reveal any interlopers in your personal space. Wall sconces from Designers Fountain do more than just decorate your porch, deck and patio beautifully. They serve double duty as security features while your family sleeps. For locations where utility takes precedence over decorative appeal, select from our Craftmade security lights, and get the coverage you need to feel secure all night long.

PRO TIP: Ensure your outdoor light array works perfectly by using timers. You will have one less task to remember, and your landscape will always appear in its best light.

When it comes to lighting, we are used to lighting that shines from above, like the sun or the moon and many artificial light sources that mostly are used from the ceiling or poles. In my early career as a lighting director for movies and television we used to up light or semi up light certain features or backgrounds in order to create dramatic visual effects. Back When I owned an event lighting company in Israel, I had an opportunity to implement some of what I have learned in the motion pictures industry. Back then there was no culture of lighting for events, the little lighting that was done was mainly halogen floodlights hanging on high poles and flooding spaces with a glaring light. Bringing the techniques I’ve learned in the motion pictures lighting, I have started up lighting trees, bushes, walls, architectural features, backgrounds etc. This created a lighting effect that was beautiful, dramatic and overwhelmed people. During the many evenings and nights that I spent overseeing the events, I used to stand close to the entry to the event location and watch people’s reaction when they entered the space. I noticed an interesting thing, the beauty we created using these special techniques of lighting, was so surprising and “out of this world” that people would just stop in their place, breath deeply with a quiet sigh and soak the view with admiration. That taught me how powerfully lighting can effect human emotions. As I started designing for architectural lighting projects, I carried on my experience from both the motion lighting and event lighting and started using in floor lighting in my designs. The first notable project that this technique was implemented for was around 1992 for the Wailing Wall tunnels in Jerusalem. The effect was surprising, interesting, complementing to the architectural nature of the tunnels, warm and dramatic.

Keeping your home and family safe is a high priority for every homeowner. One of the best, yet often neglected ways to ensure their safety is to make sure that all of your home’s electrical components are in safe and good working order. When it comes to electricity, being safe is always far better than being sorry. Rather than worrying about loose wires, short circuits and other potentially dangerous situations, work with an electrician in Los Angeles to make sure that your home is as safe as it possibly can be.

Attempting to solve electrical problems on your own can not only put you in immediate danger, but can also make the problems worse than they were to start with. While it is perfectly fine to replace light bulbs, flip breakers back on and perform other similar simple tasks by yourself, tackling anything that has to do with wiring or the other electrical components in your home should be left to the professionals.

If you have a breaker or breakers that trip frequently, then it is time to call a Los Angeles electrician. This can be a sign that you may have malfunctioning appliances, or an overloaded circuit. This might mean that you need to address a problem with a particular appliance, or your electrical service in general. In some case, a small panel upgrade can add additional circuits to your home, allowing you to more evenly spread the load.

Regardless of whether you are faced with an electrical issue or if you need to have electrical components such as a whole house surge protector installed, your safety and the integrity of your home depend on the skills and experience that only a licensed, professional electrician has. For any questions, or to talk about your electrical jobs and problems, give us a call today at The Electric Connection. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.

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