How Many

To determine how many lights you will need, find the areas where you placed the markers and count each area as a light. However, you should take the following into consideration: First, although it may seem difficult to get the "whole picture" using the flashlight technique, don't worry! You will be very close to determining your lighting needs and it will all come together at the end. Second, if you find that your lighting scheme requires many lights placed fairly close together (within 5' of each other), then you may be planning for too many lights. GOOD NEWS! - the project just got a little cheaper!! Generally speaking, with low voltage landscape lighting the rule "less is better" applies. You don't want the planes flying overhead at night to mistake your front yard for a landing runway! Lastly, if you have located lights in areas where they might become lunch for the lawn mower or a piñata for the power trimmer, you should relocate those fixtures.

If you have a row of smaller shrubs or a hedge line and have determined you will have a fixture in front of each shrub, you are probably trying to use too many lights. It is better to space the fixtures evenly across the entire line of shrubs by placing each light not more than 10 feet apart, but not any closer than 5 feet apart. You will be much happier with this look and again, by reducing your fixture count, you will be saving money.

For a shrub line that is on a "slalom", you should space the fixtures out evenly. A technique you can use to highlight this type of shrub line is to use a grazing light effect where each fixture's light beam hits several of the shrubs at once with a glancing effect.