D&D Landscaping
Tallahassee, FL · Licensed and insured(850) 354-3601
The property, after dark

Low voltage landscape lighting for North Florida properties

Low voltage path and uplighting that makes a property safe to walk and worth looking at after dark, plus holiday lighting hung and taken down for you.

Warm low voltage uplighting on a live oak and a lit garden path at dusk

Light the trees, not the neighbors

Tallahassee's live oaks are the single best lighting subject in the region and the most commonly wasted one. An oak uplit from two or three angles at a low warm color temperature turns into architecture at night. The same oak lit with one hot floodlight from the ground turns into a glare source that flattens the canopy and blinds anyone walking up the drive.

Good lighting is mostly restraint. Fewer fixtures, aimed carefully, warm rather than blue, shielded so you see the light and not the lamp. The goal is a property that looks composed after dark, not a property that looks like it is being searched.

Built to survive being outdoors here

Low voltage is the right system for a residential landscape: safer to work around, easier to extend later, and it does not require the trenching and conduit that line voltage does. What it does require is honest components. Brass and copper fixtures develop a patina and keep working. Cheap painted aluminum corrodes and fails, faster near the coast.

Connections are where most systems die. Direct burial gel connectors, correctly sized cable so the far end of the run is not dim, and a transformer sized with headroom so the system can grow. Fixtures also get placed with the mature plant in mind, because a light aimed perfectly at a three gallon shrub is aimed at nothing in four years.

Holiday lighting, hung and removed

Holiday lighting is a real service, not an afterthought. Roof lines, entries, trees and columns, installed on a schedule in November and taken down and stored in January, which is the half that people actually want to hand off.

Nobody who owns a two story house in Killearn wants to be on a ladder in December. That is the entire product.

What is included

Written down, so nobody has to remember it.

  • Low voltage path, uplight, downlight and wash fixtures
  • Tree uplighting composed for mature canopy
  • Entry, step, wall and address lighting for safety
  • Brass and copper fixtures rated for coastal humidity
  • Correctly sized cable, gel-filled connectors and transformer headroom
  • Timers and photocells set to your hours
  • Holiday lighting installation, takedown and storage
How it goes

Four steps, no mystery.

01

Walk it at dusk

Lighting decisions made in daylight are guesses. We look at what is worth lighting and what is currently glaring.

02

A layout and a price

Fixture count, placement and transformer sizing, written, so you know what you are buying.

03

Install and aim

Cable run and buried, fixtures set, then a night visit to aim every one of them. The aiming is the design.

04

Adjust as it grows

Plants move, canopy fills in. Fixtures get re-aimed on maintenance visits rather than left pointing where they used to work.

Where we do it

Landscape Lighting across North Florida.

About 45 miles in every direction from Tallahassee. The ground is genuinely different town to town, so the approach is too.

Straight answers

Questions we get about landscape lighting.

Is landscape lighting expensive to run?

No. A modern LED low voltage system for a typical residential front yard runs on a fraction of what a single old floodlight used, and a transformer on a timer or photocell only runs the hours you set. The cost is the install, not the electricity.

How long do the fixtures last?

Brass and copper fixtures outlive most of the plantings around them and develop a patina rather than corroding. LED lamps run for years. The parts that fail first in this climate are cheap aluminum housings and poorly made connections, which is exactly why we do not use them.

Do you do Christmas lights?

Yes. Roof lines, entries, columns and trees, installed on a November schedule and taken down and stored in January. The takedown is included, because that is the part everybody wants off their list.

Will lighting work under heavy oak canopy?

It works better there than almost anywhere. Dense canopy gives you something to light and something to catch downlight from above. The trick is warm color temperature and careful shielding so the fixtures disappear and only the tree shows.

Also on the truck

Work that goes with this.

Twenty minutes on the property, and a number within a day.

Free walkthrough. No charge, no pressure, mon to sat, 7am to 6pm.

Call (850) 354-3601Book a walk