When to Add Landscape Lighting (and What It Actually Costs)

Landscape lighting almost never makes the original wish list. People plan the patio, the retaining wall, the beds, and lighting gets mentioned as an afterthought, if at all. Then the project's finished, the sun goes down, and the yard they just spent real money on disappears into the dark by 8pm.

The best time to add lighting is during the original install, while the wiring can go in before beds are mulched and pavers are set. It's not required to be there for the walls or hardscape to work. It's just cheaper and cleaner to run low-voltage wire once instead of digging back through a finished bed later.

That said, lighting is one of the easier things to add after the fact. If you built a patio or wall with us last year and are just now thinking about lighting, that's a completely normal add-on project, not a redo.

As for what it actually does: path lights along a walkway for safety, uplighting on trees or a retaining wall to give it some depth at night, and accent lighting on a patio or fire pit area so it's actually usable after dinner instead of just during the day. Most of what we install is low-voltage LED, which keeps the running cost low and the fixtures small enough that you notice the light, not the fixture.

Cost depends entirely on scope, a handful of path lights along a walkway is a different project than uplighting a hundred feet of retaining wall. The honest answer is it's worth getting an actual quote for your yard rather than going off a number that was for somebody else's property.

If you've already got hardscape or walls in and the yard just goes dark at night, that's usually a quicker, less disruptive project than people expect.