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Outdoor lighting is mostly used for security. It lights up the area around your house at night to make it easier for you to spot unwanted intruders, animal or human. Besides the security angle, outdoor lighting can actually enhance the beauty of your house and the surrounding area, by accentuating the architecture of the house or the natural scenery around it. All this outdoor lighting is expensive, expensive to install and expensive to operate on a daily basis. Maintenance of the underground wiring is expensive because you have to use armored cabling to withstand the weather, to prevent water intrusion due to normal watering operations, rain and groundwater. Electrical short circuits can cause fires leading to property damage. People and animals may suffer burn injuries. Any break in the insulation of the cabling can give rise to a potentially dangerous situation where lethal electricity can critically injure and even kill a member of the family or a loved pet. You can avoid, both, the high expense and the potential danger by installing a modern low voltage lighting system.

Electrical voltage above a 60 - 70 volt threshold is sensible to humans. Above 100 volts it becomes dangerous. At just 12 volts, low voltage electricity is safe because it cannot cause electrocution. So outdoor lighting systems using low voltage electricity are absolutely safe.

The outdoor lighting system is supplied low voltage electrical power by a transformer that steps down the high voltage of 120 volts from the mains supply to a safe and low 12 volts. Some outdoor lighting systems run on DC which means that they can be run even when the mains fails. Low voltage lamps are available in the market. You can choose incandescent lamps if you like. But incandescent lamps are very energy-hungry. It is better that you go in for high efficiency lamps like the latest LED lamps that have just appeared on the market at affordable rates. LED lamps consume just one-fourth of the electricity consumed by incandescent lamps with a comparable light output.

Because the low voltage outdoor lighting system uses low voltage it is very simple to install and does not need the services of an electrical contractor. Even official regulations for this type of installation are very easy to implement. But please do check the requirements in your locality.

But getting back to the cost effectiveness for a second, consider the fact that an LED lamp uses only about 25% of the electricity of a standard lamp. How much difference would that make on your utility bill every month. Figure out those saving annually and that’s quite a bit of extra money in your pocket. And it gets even better. LED laps will last at least ten times longer than a normal incandescent lamp or even fluorescent lamps. So you’ll save money there also. Plus you won’t have the hassle of having to frequently change the bulbs.

The wiring for low voltage outdoor lighting need not be buried underground. Because the load of LED lamps is so low, the wiring is commensurately light. This means that you can change the wiring around quite easily whenever you feel the need for a change (of outdoor lighting, that is). This is a very handy feature when your house has many special features. Highlighting them all at once is garish, and that defeats the very definition of highlighting! So one month you can highlight the gable roofing, the next month the side elevation, and the colonial columns the following month. The same applies to the landscaping or wooded area around the house.

This primer on low voltage outdoor lighting should encourage you to change over to a modern efficient lighting system for your outdoor lighting needs. You’ll save pots of money in electricity bills, take my word for it! More importantly, you’ll be 100% free of electrical shock hazard. Your householder’s insurance cover will benefit too, from the changeover. This means that the value of your house will go up while you are actually saving money. Now aren’t you glad you read this primer?