Category Archives: Lighting

Having outdoor security lighting for your Phoenix home can help deter intruders. It can also make it safer for you to walk outside at night, by lighting your path. You may have noticed your neighbor\’s motion sensor flood light when you walk by their home. While this does light up their driveway, criminals have learned how to work around them.

Where should you put outdoor security lighting? Our electricians know the right areas to install lights for them to be effective. Keep the following factors in mind when you install one of these systems at your home.

Avoid Creating Blind Spots

When you have one very bright light shining on your property, the areas outside it can become blind spots. This lighting setup creates darker areas where intruders can hide. Instead of having one bright light, such as a flood light, set up multiple lights that aren’t as bright.

When you have several lights set up at certain angles, you will reduce or eliminate blind spots. Your outdoor security lighting system will illuminate all areas of your property, which creates a more difficult area for intruders to invade.

Remember the Back and Side Yards

It’s common to light up the front yard, especially around doors. However, your backyard is at an even bigger risk for intruders. It provides more cover, away from the street. It’s important to make sure you have a properly positioned outdoor security lighting system to deter intruders. Your lights should illuminate all sides of your property.

Choose the Right Height

How high should your outdoor security lighting be placed? Lights that are close to the ground won’t provide the lighting you need. Instead, you\’ll have faint lighting and lots of blind spots. Lights that are too high need to be much brighter to provide lighting that reaches the ground.

Your outdoor lighting system needs to be at just the right height to provide plenty of illumination without creating blind spots. Your lights should point downward to shine on anyone in your yard. Keep in mind that placing your lights higher up helps protect them from tampering. An electrician understands the reasons behind an outdoor security lighting system and will work with you to help protect your home.

Avoid Obstacles

If you want to install a motion sensor lighting system, be aware of obstacles. Tree branches, for example, might blow in front of these sensors when it’s windy. This causes the sensors to go off when they don’t need to and may make you worry without reason. Remove obstacles or put motion sensor lighting in areas where tree branches and other potential obstacles won’t be a problem.

Avoid Glare

Glare from very bright lights can make it difficult for your outdoor security lighting system to work effectively. It causes the surrounding area to have more shadows and hiding places. Additionally, these bright lights can be obnoxious to look at. Since your neighbors get used to looking away from your bright lights, they may be less likely to notice someone sneaky into your yard.

A professional electrician will be able to help you avoid glare by ensuring your outdoor security lights have the right shielding. They can also help make sure that your lights are positioned properly and not pointed toward each other. Angling your security lights toward the ground can help cut down on glare.

Contact the Professionals

If you’re thinking of installing outdoor security lighting for your Phoenix home or your business, contact Turn It On Electric. Our electricians can safely and properly install this type of lighting to help keep your home or office secure.

Different types of lights allow you to use and enjoy your home, office, and the places you visit. Some make it possible to use the building around the clock. Others focus your attention on a specific detail, whether it’s a task or something to admire. Professionals classify types of lights into three categories that include general, task, and accent.

General Lighting

When you walk into a room and turn on the light switch, you are most likely turning on your general, or ambient, lighting. This type of light provides utility in lighting designs and can be found in most rooms of your house. General lighting can be ceiling-mounted or even recessed fixtures, as long as their purpose is to cast light evenly throughout the room.

You can dress up the appearance of general lighting by using recessed lighting, track lights, wall sconces, chandeliers, or pendants. Some kitchens, laundry rooms, and garages use overhead fluorescent bulbs. Although very different in aesthetic, each of these types of lights will broadcast light for the room. You can use dimmer switches with overhead lighting to give you the ability to change the look, without changing the bulb. 

Commercial buildings typically use fluorescent general lighting. Imagine your office; that bright buzzing glow provides an evenly cast light throughout the area. Restaurants often consider the atmosphere they want to create for their guests and use softer ambient lighting to set the mood.

Task Lighting

If you want to illuminate a specific area of a room, consider task lighting. This smaller light directs attention where it shines.

Task lighting under kitchen cabinets can increase functionality by illuminating the work area below, making it easier to see what you\’re cooking or cleaning. Another ideal place for task lighting in the kitchen is an overhead light at the sink. The professionals at Turn It On Electric can show you the best kinds of task lighting to simplify work in the kitchen.

Other examples of task lights include floor, desk, and end table lamps. A floor lamp can illuminate a hallway, without the need for bright general lighting. A desk lamp can provide extra light when reviewing paperwork. End table lamps can lower the lighting in a room, while still allowing you to comfortably read. 

Task lighting also has a place in the commercial world. These are often customized to the industry or business. Some businesses are even starting to use this type of lighting to increase productivity since it helps their employees focus on the task at hand. Designers use different types of lights that combine both form and function for retail and commercial buildings. The technicians at Turn It On Electric can help you select the best lighting for each area of your home or commercial space.

Accent Lighting

Accent lighting is less common than the first two categories. However, there is still a place for them in homes and businesses. 

Display cases or bookcases may have built-in accent lighting to highlight the contents. Accent lights also make it easier to read sheet music at the piano. Holiday lighting may even serve as a temporary accent light to highlight decorations.

You’ll find accent lighting in art galleries and museums when you notice a light illuminating a piece of artwork. You may see an accent light highlighting a water feature when you pull up to a restaurant. This type of lighting draws your eye to something worth admiring.

Creating Layers

Imagine sitting in a living room with one bright overhead light. You probably wouldn\’t want to stay there for very long. Now imagine the same room with an overhead light, a few decorative side table lamps, and an accent light highlighting a painting on the wall. Creating layers of light in your home or commercial space will help it serve a variety of purposes.

A well-lit room will have multiple layers of lighting. Start big and consider the general lighting first. After you\’ve determined the main lighting, then consider the details. Make a list of how you use each room and anything you want to highlight. A professional can help you determine what lighting will meet your needs.

Hire an Electrician

Lighting is complicated. For example, a recessed light could serve multiple purposes. If it shines light down from the ceiling to evenly illuminate the room, it\’s general lighting. However, if it\’s angled at a piece of artwork on the wall, it\’s accent lighting. Both are recessed lighting, but they serve very different purposes in lighting your home.

Trust the professionals to help with everything from installing a ceiling fan to changing the entire lighting system in your home or commercial property. Contact Turn It On Electric today to learn more about using the different types of lights to increase your comfort and productivity.

If you’re on the lookout for home improvements that make your home more livable and enjoyable, consider lighting upgrades for the kitchen and bathrooms. When light in these rooms is ample and carefully placed, everyday tasks are easier to accomplish.

1. Recessed or Can Lights

Installing recessed lights in your kitchen or bathroom gives them an inviting and warm feeling, especially if the rooms have a raised ceiling plate. Lighting upgrades like these are far enough from the floor to diffuse the light to create even light at the counters, lower cabinets, and drawers.

Of all the lighting upgrades, installing recessed or can lights is best left to the professionals at Turn It On Electric. Besides precise cutting, the electricians have to snake wires through the walls and ceilings and make sure that the fixtures are tight and insulated.

It’s especially important if they protrude into the attic to have a tight fit to prevent air from leaking into the attic. Bathrooms are particularly humid and electrical work, even for simple lighting upgrades, should be made by an expert.

2. Under Cabinet Lighting

Putting lights or LED ropes under the cabinets makes the kitchen so much more functional on cloudy days and at night. The two options include a battery or hard-wired lights. Of the two, hard-wired lights are much more convenient since they provide a consistent amount of illumination and never need a battery change. Unless you use rechargeable batteries, battery-powered lights have a high cost over the long term since they deplete their batteries fairly quickly.

3. Spot Lighting

If you’ve added any work areas to the kitchen or the original lighting is inadequate, use lighting upgrades that will better illuminate those areas. Spot lighting over a kitchen island and the sink makes using them so much more efficient. See more clearly when cooking and cleaning in the kitchen.

4. In-Cabinet Lights

One of the most welcome lighting upgrades might be lights inside a dark linen closet or a deep, dark kitchen pantry. These spaces provide convenient storage, but without an adequate light on each shelf, they’re inconvenient to use after dark. A lighting specialist from Turn It On Electric can help you choose the types that work best for you.

5. Change the Color Temperature

All bulbs have a color temperature that you can change with lighting upgrades. LED bulbs come in several different color temperatures that affect how things look in a room. Bathrooms are particularly important rooms to have lighting upgrades that allow you to see things more clearly. If the color temperatures aren’t compatible with your workplace, your makeup may appear differently at home and the office.

LED bulbs give you the widest variety of color temperatures, ranging from warm white to sunlight, a hue that emits a bright white appearance. It’s challenging to know how a light will look in your home if you\’re browsing the aisles at home improvement centers. The best way is to invite the pros from Turn It On Electric to your home. We will help you choose from different colors and types of lighting that best match your needs and surroundings.

Let the professionals at Turn It On Electric help you choose lighting upgrades and install your new lights so you can spend time enjoying them.

A few decades ago, it was inconceivable to think LED lights could do so much to enhance lighting. Unlike other kinds of bulbs, LED bulbs use electricity to fire off photons that create light.

They are not heat-dependent like incandescent bulbs that need a metal filament to reach 4,132 degrees F to light up. All an LED bulb needs is a minute amount of energy that sparks the light-giving reaction.

CFL bulbs use about the same amount of energy as LED bulbs, but emanate light through a different process entirely. They use electricity to excite the molecules of gases to create the glow that emits light. In so doing, CFLs emit plenty of heat.

Energy Use

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), an LED uses 75 percent less electricity than an incandescent bulb for the same amount of light. When shopping for the bulbs, you’ll find the wattage of the bulb on the packaging, along with the wattage of equivalent incandescent bulbs. A 5-watt LED bulb can produce as much light as a 35-watt incandescent bulb.

Heat Production

The DOE reports that CFL and incandescent bulbs emit 80 and 90 percent respectively of the electricity they use as heat. Considering the long, hot summers in the Phoenix area, using these bulbs instead of LED lights adds to the cooling load for many months of the year. A home that uses LED bulbs exclusively will stay cooler, which cuts your cost of cooling.

Colors and Lumens

Besides the strings of colorful holiday lights, LED lights are available in a variety of hues from red to purple and bright to subdued whites. The packaging will indicate whether they’re cool, warm, or bright white. Although the packaging for LED bulbs compares their energy use to incandescent bulbs, it has nothing to do with the amount of light they produce. The most revealing comparison is to look for their lumens. Higher lumens indicate more light.

Durability

Instead of measuring the lifetimes of LED lights in hours, they’re measured in decades. Even though the bulbs cost more, they start saving you money the moment you replace your old incandescent bulbs.

LEDs lights are also a good alternative to CFLs because they last longer and tolerate power interruptions better. LED lights excel in areas where you turn the lights on and off frequently, like garages, closets, and bathrooms. CFLs tend to burn out faster in these locations.

Safety

Some of the LED lights have plastic housings, which increases their safety since they won’t break on impact or create shards of glass. They also don’t emit enough heat to spark a fire, even around highly combustible materials.

Versatility

LED lights come in many colors, shape, and sizes as individual bulbs, lighting strips, and enclosed fixtures. They can be hardwired or run off batteries. You’ll find them in flashlights and grow lights in both large and small greenhouses. The only place LED bulbs aren’t suitable is inside ovens. Temperatures that exceed 212 degrees F interfere with LED technology.

Smart LED Bulbs

Smart LED lights have chips inside them that make it possible to control them remotely, as long as you have a compatible home hub or smartphone. Some will change their colors, permit geofencing, or play music. All are dimmable and operate on a schedule. The lights operate either via Wi-Fi signals or Bluetooth.

Bottom Line

Swapping out your old light bulbs with LED lights makes a lot of sense and will increase your home’s energy efficiency and your enjoyment. While some bulbs are a simple do-it-yourself replacement, many larger fixtures require the work of a licensed electrician. Contact Turn It On Electric today to learn about converting your home or business to LED lighting today.