I went through the ILLI Intensive Course in 2023 — five days and five evenings of design, fixture testing, and a hands-on team installation under mentors with thirty and forty years in the trade. The program was founded by Janet Lennox Moyer, who literally wrote the book on landscape lighting. The training shapes how I design every system. What ILLI training actually covers →
Landscape lighting is a design discipline. The starting point is your house, your trees, and your sightlines — what's worth revealing, where shadow should sit, how the property should read at night. The fixtures are the last thing chosen, not the first. Here's what shapes the design.
I meet you on the property during the day to look at the trees, the architecture, and the sightlines. We talk through what you'd want lit, what you use the space for, and what you'd rather leave dark. The walk is where the design starts; nothing gets specified until we've done it together.
After the walk, I design the system around what's actually worth revealing on your home. The limb structure of a live oak. The texture on a stone facade. The line of a walkway. Every fixture has a specific job. The fixture choice serves the design, not the other way around.
What we don't light matters as much as what we do. Darkness gives the lit elements weight and keeps a yard from looking floodlit. Composing with shadow is one of the things ILLI training spends a lot of time on, and it's part of why a designed system reads differently than one that's just bright.
Color temperature, beam spread, and mounting height get chosen fixture by fixture. Warm white to match a stone facade. A tighter beam to throw the height of a column. A wide wash on textured brick. The variables aren't defaults; each one is a choice made for the spot it's going.
Wire sized for the actual load. Transformers spec'd with voltage drop on the longest runs in mind. Every splice a waterproof, direct-burial connector. The technical side of the system gets the same depth of attention as the design side. That's what keeps a system running well a decade in.
Once the install is finished, I come back at dusk and stay through the dark to aim every fixture by eye. You're on the property with me. We watch the system come on for the first time together and adjust until it looks the way it should. The job isn't done until that walk-through is done.
I'm one of a small group of ILLI-certified designers in Houston. The credential comes from a five-day, hands-on intensive course taught by working designers with thirty and forty years in the trade. What ILLI training requires →
Most of the work happens in daylight. The one piece that has to happen at night is the final aim. That's the only way to know the system is doing what we intended.
We meet on site during the day to look at the property: trees, architecture, sightlines. We talk through what you'd want lit at night and what you'd rather leave dark.
A design specific to your home, trees, and how you use the space. Fixture count, placement, beam spread, and color temperature are all chosen on purpose.
Low-voltage runs are trenched and routed cleanly. Fixtures are set, wired to the transformer, and given a rough aim during daylight.
We return at dusk and aim every fixture with you on the property. Hot spots, glare, and overlit zones get corrected until the system looks designed, not installed.
Fixtures run $250–$350 each installed. Starter systems ($3,500–$6,000) typically cover ~10–20 fixtures. Front façade, a few trees, pathway accents. Full front-and-back ($6,000–$12,000) runs ~20–35 fixtures. Larger installs go well beyond 35 fixtures.
Systems are designed so you can start focused. Front yard and a few trees. And extend later as the design grows with the property.
We take landscape lighting projects throughout the Houston metro: River Oaks, Memorial, West University, The Woodlands, Katy, Sugar Land, Pearland, and the communities in between. If you're within about 40 miles of downtown, we can come out for a site walk.
A recent landscape lighting project, and the guides on what to budget and how to think about repair vs. replacement.
Tell us about your property. We'll walk it with you and design a system around what you have.
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