Every year, according to the popular landscaping community Love Your Landscape, the average American family spends between $400 and $600 to improve and maintain the landscaping around their home. Unfortunately, in many parts of the country, the colder months tend to take away much of the splendor of that landscaping, as the days go from long and sunny to short and black.
Choosing the right home or commercial outdoor lighting fixtures can help solve your problem by making your landscaping shine, whether the sun is up or not. If that just sounds like a great way to waste money and hurt the environment, take heart. By learning to spot eco-friendly home and commercial outdoor lighting fixtures, you can show off your beautiful landscaping, without wasting money or growing your carbon footprint.
How Can You Spot Green Lighting Fixtures?
- Get to Know Your Acronyms
- Do Your Manufacturer Research
- Look for Solar Compatibility
- Check the Box for the Energy Star Seal
As the popular green living site TreeHugger details, if you want to find green lighting, you should look for vintage outdoor lighting fixtures that are compatible with CFL or LED light bulbs. CFLs, or compact fluorescent lights, are known to be long lasting and relatively cheap. They also use a lot less energy than the more traditional incandescent bulb. LED, light emitting diodes, are the longest lasting bulb and the least energy intensive, but they’re markedly more expensive than other bulb types. Whichever option you go with, these fixtures will ultimately pay for themselves through noticeable energy savings.
The simplest way to find the best outdoor lighting fixtures for the energy conscious is to check out individual manufacturer websites. From GE to Phillips, manufacturers list energy requirements, bulb compatibility, estimated yearly savings, and other important stats on all of their home and commercial outdoor lighting fixtures online. This is probably the single best way to make an educated decision.
If you really want to go green, you should look for outdoor pole lighting fixtures and other options that can easily be hooked into a solar energy grid or mini solar panel. By finding options that offer this type of compatibility, you can go completely off the grid, literally requiring none of the man-made energy that is increasingly damaging our planet.
As the U.S. Department of Energy points out, more and more companies are adopting the standards put forward by the federal government’s Energy STAR program. By adopting these standards, lighting producers are making a commitment to keeping users’ costs low, while simultaneously helping to mitigate humanity’s impact on the environment. You need only look for the Energy STAR seal to find lighting fixtures that can keep your home looking great, without adversely affecting Mother Nature.
As you can see, illuminating your landscaping and showing off your beautiful investment doesn’t mean having to kill your bank account or the environment. Just keep these tips in mind when searching for your decorative outdoor lighting fixtures to keep the environment healthy and your home looking great. Refernce materials: www.ristreetclocks.com