Chris Waugh, owner of NY Landscape Lighting in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., started noticing a slowdown in lighting inquiries in late July. It was nothing to cause concern though. “Things typically slow down in the summer because people begin traveling and getting out more,” Waugh says.
The thing is, the normal summertime slowdown hadn’t happened for the past few years because people were staying home. Nowadays, things are starting to feel like pre-COVID again. In turn, Waugh has ramped up his marketing to more of a pre-COVID level, too.
“We did a lot more direct mail this year and it worked very well,” Waugh says. “We like to drive leads and get all of our work lined up by summer. For the most part, we were able to do that. When things did start to slow down this summer, it was OK because we were already booked up. Now we’re focused on holiday lighting. Everything goes in cycles, and we’re fine with that.”
In the San Francisco Bay area, landscape lighting has been included in roughly 80% of the projects Bayscape Landscape Management crews have installed over the past few years. That is starting to change as homeowners begin paying more attention to their budgets.
“The customer almost always loves the complete landscaping plan, but they want to scale back right now,” says Rick Gallo, vice president of construction at Bayscape Landscape Management in Alviso, Calif. “We’ve even seen $180,000 construction projects get whittled down to $70,000. The designer had put in $25,000 just in lighting. Lighting is one of the first things to get value-engineered out of a project. With any home improvement project, the landscaping is the icing on the cake. The lighting is the candles and sparklers.”
It’s not that consumers no longer want the candles and sparklers; it’s just that they realize they may not need them right away, especially when having to pick and choose what they’re spending money on.
With any home improvement project, the landscaping is the icing on the cake. The lighting is the candles and sparklers.”
— Rick Gallo, vice president of construction at Bayscape Landscape Management
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Jon Anderson, owner and president of Sunshine Irrigation & Light in Phoenix, Ariz., says there’s a good chance the customer will eventually want lighting added to their landscape, probably sooner than later. Furthermore, whenever that day comes, the landscape may be in a better position to really showcase the value of lighting.
Laying the groundwork for lighting sales
As Anderson explains, for a homeowner to feel the full benefits of landscape lighting, the landscaping needs to be worthy of lighting up. Just illuminating the front of a house usually doesn’t produce a lasting wow factor. When fine-tuning a landscape plan based on a client’s tighter budget, Anderson would rather focus on things like trees and water features — things that can be accented by lighting in the future.
To make sure lighting remains on the table, Anderson stresses the importance of getting the infrastructure in the ground.
“With the way things are right now, our contingency has been to really push a rough-in,” Anderson says. That’s the stage of a construction project when items like the utility lines are put in place. “We’re already trenching for irrigation,” Anderson continues. “So it makes sense to roll the lighting cable in the trench and tie it in knots where there’s a tree or sculpture the customer plans on lighting at some point. Down the road, the customer can call us back to put the transformer and fixtures in, maybe work out some extensions here and there, and hook everything up. At this stage when we’re roughing it in, we’re pretty much just charging for materials (the lighting cable). We make it pretty hard to say no.”
Gallo is taking the same approach. “We sell the customer on the idea that we won’t have to tear their yard up again when we come back to finish the lighting,” Gallo says.
Additionally, Gallo likes to initiate a conversation with the customer regarding the purpose of the lighting. Some lighting elements are purely decorative and could be put off for a while. Those that provide a safety element, however, should be installed right away. He’s talking about things like step lighting.
“Regardless of how the market is, there is always a little push and shove when it comes to lighting,” Gallo says. He adds that the trick as a contractor is knowing when and how to push back.
Creating a cool outdoor hangout
To make the most of the immediate opportunities that are out there, it pays for contractors to understand what the trends are.
“We’ve been using larger bulbs on string or cable that’s hanging over a patio or firepit. People have been wanting to make their outdoor space more like an outdoor restaurant or resort.”
— Chris Waugh, owner of NY Landscape Lighting
NY Landscape Lighting has been seeing an increase in homeowners wanting to create outdoor dining-type areas. Kitchens and outdoor living in general have been popular for many years. But when outdoor dining started to become a thing in the restaurant industry a few years ago, homeowners were inspired to create the same type of environment in their backyards.
“We’ve been doing a lot more bistro lighting,” Waugh says. “We’ve been using larger bulbs on string or cable that’s hanging over a patio or firepit. People have been wanting to make their outdoor space more like an outdoor restaurant or resort.”
Gallo has been seeing the same trend out in California. He especially likes using the low-voltage LED bistro lights offered by one of his primary suppliers.
“We’re doing less lighting in front yards these days,” Gallo says. “We’re mainly lighting pathways, with maybe an accent here and there. The lion’s share of the lighting fixtures are going in the backyard. That’s the space most homeowners really want to activate now. Low-voltage LEDs help create this warm place for people to hang out. We’ll run LED bistro lights all along a fence line, creating a sense of space and light all around the yard. Then we’ll add some uplights and spotlights in a few areas to accent a few things.”
Even though demand has softened a bit this year, Anderson says he is still running into opportunities where lighting is a good upsell. There are instances when he feels confident that lighting would enhance an outdoor environment more than, say, a random water feature. “I’ll tell the customer, ‘Your backyard is already a cool place to hang out. Why not just light it up so it will look so much cooler? Plus, it will require less maintenance,’” Anderson says.
Waugh has become a big believer in lighting up sections of a yard as opposed to singular features.
“As a general rule, we like to create an entire scene with our accent lighting,” Waugh says. “The same goes if someone has a small budget of a few thousand dollars. It doesn’t really make sense to spread 10 fixtures over a 1-acre area. We encourage them to focus on one part of the yard and look at their entire lighting plan in phases. We can always come back later to light up another area. It’s better to make what you’re doing look perfect than it is to spread yourself too thin.”
Consumer tastes can vary
According to Waugh, consumer preferences can vary from one market to the next, or even one client to the next. For example, there are some really exciting things going on with color-changing lights, and a lot of homeowners and commercial clients really like them. But not everyone. “We actually don’t do a lot of RGB,” Waugh says. “I prefer that classic white look, and so does the majority of our clientele. I would say 95% of what we do is classic white.” On the other side of the country in California, Gallo is seeing the same trend.
“I’ll tell the customer, ‘Your backyard is already a cool place to hang out. Why not just light it up so it will look so much cooler? Plus, it will require less maintenance.’”
— Jon Anderson, owner and president of Sunshine Irrigation & Light
With respect to fixtures, Waugh has seen a growing interest in black as well as dark brass or bronze. He attributes this to a trend in homebuilding where black is frequently used for things like door and window trim.
“A dark lighting fixture is more modern-looking when you have that type of modern farmhouse look on a new home,” Waugh says. “At the same time, a dark bronze or brass fixture blends well with any mulch in the landscape. This helps put the emphasis on the effect of the lighting itself, as opposed to the fixture.”
Out in Phoenix, Anderson has seen a trend toward copper and brass. He is also seeing more interest in ground-well fixtures, which he is in favor of. As a landscape designer, his tendency is to hide the lighting as much as possible.
“I want the landscape lighting to be invisible until it comes on at night,” Anderson says. “That’s why we’ve been buying more ground wells than anything else over the past five years. We’ve also been shying away from things like pathway lights and bullet lights all over a patio.”
Up by New York City, Waugh has also seen a trend where pathway lighting is starting to fall by the wayside. “We’ve started doing a lot more downlighting, or 'moonlighting,'” Waugh says. “That’s a nice look to light up walkway areas and pathways through gardens and wooded areas. It’s a nice, soft light that resembles a moon.”
One other trend is that many homeowners are looking for more control over their lighting systems as opposed to just having them turn on/off at certain times.
“Consumers are looking for systems that are dimmable and programmable,” Gallo says. As a result, he has been looking to lighting manufacturers who’ve gotten into programmable transformers. He has also taken a liking to transformers with an astronomical timer built in.
“With some of these systems now, you can link everything to the GPS location of the house,” Gallo explains. “Then you can tell the system to turn on an hour before sunset, for example. Homeowners really like that.”
Great maintenance is a great sales tool
NY Landscape Lighting has been in business since 2005. Lighting system maintenance has been a huge part of the company’s value proposition from day one. To that point, Waugh says he emphasizes one characteristic when evaluating new lighting fixtures.
“I look at the ease of maintenance,” Waugh says. “I look at how difficult it’s going to be to change lamps and clean the glass. With some fixtures I’ve used in the past, you had to remove several screws to get the lens off and the bulb out. That becomes an issue when you have 50 to 100 fixtures on a property. I like fixtures that are simple to put together, simple to take apart, and look nice.”
That’s a nice look to light up walkway areas and pathways through gardens and wooded areas. It’s a nice, soft light that resembles a moon.”
— Chris Waugh, owner of NY Landscape Lighting
Waugh also considers how difficult it will be to adjust integrated fixtures. Some, he says, make it pretty easy to adjust the lumen output or the angle of the lamp. When those tasks are made easier, managing the overall system becomes easier for the lighting maintenance crew.
“We offer maintenance plans where we’ll come out two to four times a year to be proactive,” Waugh says. “We keep the lenses clean. We adjust angles on fixtures or completely move fixtures around as shrubs and trees grow out. Part of installing a lighting system involves keeping the future maintenance in mind. We try to position the fixtures where we think they’ll still make sense in a few years. We also leave a little extra wire just in case they need to move.”
Good maintenance, Waugh says, is a great sales tool. When you can keep things looking like they did the first day they were installed, your customer notices — and so do their friends and neighbors. That’s a pretty good tool to have to make future sales again.
Explore the October 2023 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
