Landscape Lighting Installation and Design
Landscape lighting installation turns the yard you spent years building into a space you can use after sunset. Smitty's has designed and installed low voltage landscape lighting for homeowners across Essex County since 1980, from single-fixture accent work to full-property systems covering paths, plantings, patios, and pool areas.
Every system is designed on your property, installed by our own crews, and aimed after dark once it is live. We are licensed, insured, and we guarantee our work.
Low Voltage Landscape Lighting Built to Last
Nearly every residential system we install is low voltage landscape lighting, running at 12 volts stepped down from household current through a transformer. Low voltage is the standard for residential outdoor lighting installation for three reasons: it is safer to work around planting beds and play areas, the cable can be buried at shallow depth without conduit, and the fixtures draw a fraction of the power that line-voltage equivalents need.
We specify solid brass and copper fixtures rather than aluminum or composite. Brass and copper cost more up front and they hold up through freeze and thaw cycles, road salt, string trimmers, and a decade of lawn irrigation. Aluminum housings corrode at the seams and the lenses cloud. Paired with LED lamps, a properly specified system runs on roughly the electricity of a single household appliance and goes years between lamp changes.
What We Light
A landscape lighting design is a set of decisions about what to reveal and what to leave dark. These are the techniques we combine on most properties.
Path and Walkway Lighting
Low fixtures along walks, steps, and driveway edges so guests can see where the surface changes. Spacing matters more than fixture count. Lights set at even intervals every few feet read as a runway. Fixtures placed where the path actually turns or changes grade look deliberate and do the same job with fewer of them.
Uplighting for Trees and Architecture
Fixtures aimed up at specimen trees, stone facades, columns, and entryways. Uplighting is what gives a property depth after dark, because it pushes light to the back of the lot instead of leaving a bright house ringed by black.
Downlighting and Moonlighting
Fixtures mounted high in mature trees or under eaves, angled down to cast soft pools of light and leaf shadow across the lawn. Moonlighting mimics natural light more closely than ground-mounted fixtures do, and it keeps hardware out of the high-traffic areas where mowers, dogs, and kids find it.
Patio, Wall, and Step Lighting
Fixtures recessed into retaining walls, seat walls, columns, and step risers, washing light down across the hardscape from a source you cannot see. This is the lighting that makes an outdoor living area usable for dinner rather than merely visible.
Pool and Water Feature Lighting
Perimeter and feature lighting around pools and ponds, including waterfalls, positioned to light the deck and coping for safe footing while picking up movement on the water surface.
How a Landscape Lighting Installation Comes Together
- Consultation. We walk the property with you in daylight and again at dusk, and talk through what you want lit, how you use the space, and the budget range you are working in.
- Design. You get a fixture-by-fixture plan showing placement, fixture type, and beam angle, with a fixed price. Our design staff is in-house, so the person who drew the plan is the person who answers questions about it.
- Installation. Our crews trench and bury cable, set fixtures, mount the transformer, and wire the system. Most residential installations finish in one to three days.
- Night aiming. We come back after dark and aim every fixture with the system live. Lighting cannot be aimed accurately in daylight, and a system that was never night-aimed is a common reason a professionally installed system still looks wrong.
- Service. Plantings grow in, fixtures shift, lamps eventually fail. We adjust and service the systems we install, and we take on repair and expansion of systems installed by someone else.
Lighting Designed Alongside Your Patio, Walls, and Pool
Most landscape lighting companies show up after the hardscape is finished and work around whatever is already built. We design and install the patios and walkways, retaining walls, paver driveways, pools, and ponds too, which means lighting gets planned into the build instead of retrofitted onto it.
Sleeving and conduit go in before the pavers are set. Wall lights are specified while the wall is being laid. Wire runs are buried during excavation rather than cut into a finished lawn. Adding lighting during a hardscape build costs less than coming back for it later, and the result has no visible cable runs or patched turf.
What Landscape Lighting Installation Costs
Price is driven by fixture count, fixture quality, and how much cable has to be run, not by the size of your property. A focused system lighting an entry, a walkway, and two or three trees sits at the low end. A full-property system covering the front elevation, plantings, paths, patio, and pool area sits well above it.
Systems built with solid brass fixtures and LED lamps cost more to install and less to own. The parts that generate service calls on budget systems are the fixtures and the lamps, so the cheaper system is usually the one you pay for twice.
We quote a fixed price off the approved design, so the number you sign off on is the number you pay. We do not price by the fixture over the phone, because fixture count is an output of the design rather than an input to it.
Why Homeowners Choose Smitty's
We have been designing and installing landscape lighting in New Jersey since 1980. Along the way:
- Licensed and insured, with all of our work guaranteed
- In-house design staff, so design and installation are not handed between companies
- Members of the New Jersey Landscape Association and the Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute
- Residential and commercial properties of every size
- A full-service landscape design and installation contractor, so lighting is designed with the plantings and hardscape rather than around them
Read what our customers say about working with us.
Service Area
We work out of Cedar Grove, and the majority of our landscape lighting installations are in Essex County:
Verona, Montclair, Glen Ridge, Caldwell, West Caldwell, North Caldwell, Essex Fells, Roseland, Livingston, and Short Hills. We install throughout Morris County as well, including Montville, Boonton, Mountain Lakes, Morristown, Madison, and Florham Park, and we are taking on a growing amount of work in Bergen County, including Mahwah, Wyckoff, Franklin Lakes, and Ridgewood.
Not sure whether you are in range? Call 973-785-8483 and ask.
Schedule a Landscape Lighting Consultation
Call 973-785-8483 or contact us and we will set up a walk-through of your property. Consultations are free and there is no obligation to go ahead.
Landscape Lighting Frequently Asked Questions
Most residential systems go in within one to three days once the design is approved. Larger properties, and jobs that require running cable under a driveway or walk, take longer.
Book a free consultation today... Take the next step
For a free quote, please call (973)785-8483 or contact us using the form below.
