Since the inception of NightScenes, I’ve tried hard to communicate to custom home builders the importance of using a professional outdoor lighting service for their high quality projects. It’s pretty much fallen on deaf ears, however, until recently.
Now that we’ve celebrated 10 years as a stand-alone outdoor lighting company, without offering any other services like landscaping or irrigation, some builders are beginning to see that many consumers actually do appreciate the exclusive services we, and companies like ours, provide. Otherwise, we would have gone out of business by now.
Most builders rarely think about outdoor lighting for their projects, or they’ll have the landscaper put in a 10 or 20 fixture ‘package’ and call it done. What this does, unfortunately, is give the home purchaser minimal lighting that they don’t really like because it was not well planned and is not sufficient to properly enhance their home or landscape. Small lighting packages like this may be fine for a smaller spec or track home, but not for a large custom home, and especially not a high end custom home in excess of $500K. Here in the central Texas area, that home is usually 4000 square feet or more on a fairly large lot of property.
We recently completed a project for a client who had tried twice to get a lighting system that would properly accent his home and landscape. Both times he decided to use an all-in-one company that offered many different services, including outdoor lighting; both times he was disappointed with the outcome. He had an 8000 square foot home on about a half-acre of property, and had only 25 fixtures (all exactly the same) for the whole place. The installation company gave little or no thought to planning a lighting system that could adequately bring out the best in this large and beautiful home. This is where an outdoor lighting design company like ours really shines.
We interviewed the client and listened to what they wanted. We then developed a comprehensive design which included 10 different types of fixtures, each with a specific purpose. We used a variety of lighting effects and several intensities to create different levels of light throughout the property to accommodate the intended use of the space in each area. The home is now blanketed in soft lighting, providing ambience and safety throughout, highlighting the home in an amazing way. The client is now thrilled with their landscape lighting system!
This is the same service we provide for custom home builders so the home they have created for their client looks its best at night, and the client ends up with lighting that they really love from the moment they take the keys to their new custom built home.
Only a few home builders see the value in using a service like ours, but those builders are exactly the ones that desire premium results for their clients. And those are the kind of professionals that we appreciate working with because we share a common goal – making their clients happy. These are the builders who recognize quality and use only the best pool builders and the best trim carpenters. They prefer to use craftsmen in their building projects, instead of the cheap guys because they know that the finished work will be far superior, and their client will know and see the difference. These builders also know that they don’t have to oversee or micro-manage the work because they are working with real professionals. Yes, these are the high-end, expertly skilled custom home builders that we like to work with best.
So it’s good to see that more and more of these elite home builders are reaching out to us to enhance the magnificent homes they are designing and building. We are excited to see the expressions on their faces when they realize the vast difference between what they have gotten in the past from some other guy and what they get from us now.
Contact us here to see if your custom home builder is using us for the outdoor lighting on your new central Texas custom home.
