soffit lighting installation

Cut holes, run wires, enjoy.

quote:

---

After reading the blog linked and walking around the neighborhood at night, I am going with up lighting only.

LINK

The soffit lighting looks horrible. Bright light up top and not much below.

---

Most accent lighting, when done poorly, looks terrible. The blog you posted put some real shitty examples up, and was pretty disingenuous. The best way is a combination of both using appropriate beam spread angles to accent Architectural features, and to provide the illusion of depth.

More to think about. All I really want to do is to light up specific plants and wash a couple of walls.

I didn’t see any listing of beam spread for the fixtures I looked at. Maybe I have to go to the insert or manu site for that.

The real life examples in my neighborhood were bad. And, the same could be said for some of the houses with up lighting.

quote:

---

I was all set to add the under eave downlighting. After reading the blog linked and walking around the neighborhood at night, I am going with up lighting only.

---

I was in the exact same boat and am very glad I decided to go with landscape lighting instead. With that being said there are a few areas I will be installing soffit downlights in the next few weeks because landscape lighting is not feasible (soffit above carport, at doors of shop, side storage yard, side walkway, etc). I am also wiring all of the soffit lights to be on a smart dimmer switch to be able to program it for dusk to dawn and control the brightness. Go with a landscape lighting kit everywhere you can and you wont be disappointed.

Landscape lighting: Volt

Soffit lighting: Torchstar 6"

I hate it too. It is a waste of electricity, doesn’t improve the appearance of architecturally ordinary houses, and is surely a case of “contractor trend” and keeping up with the Joneses. In most applications, it looks downright cheesy.

Now, let’s get to the biggest drawback of the stuff in our climate: it attracts sh*loads of bugs, which in turn attract spiders, lizards, etc. All of those will create dirt: dirt from the dead bugs entrapped by the spiders, dirt from the lizard poop, general crud from the swarming gnats, no see-ums, and other critters attracted by the lights and things that feed on them.

Next door neighbor’s house is loaded with accent lighting: soffit downlighting over every damn window, additional accent lighting along the walls, a yard full of up lights on trees and bushes. That poor bastard power-washes 2-3x a year, and can’t figure out why his house is always looking spotty/dirty. Meanwhile, I have zero exterior lighting, aside from porch lights that are only turned on for a couple hours in the evening in fall/winter: the bricks are clean & I don’t have streamers of cobwebs festooning my screens.

quote:

---

Now, let’s get to the biggest drawback of the stuff in our climate: it attracts sh*loads of bugs, which in turn attract spiders, lizards, etc. All of those will create dirt: dirt from the dead bugs entrapped by the spiders, dirt from the lizard poop, general crud from the swarming gnats, no see-ums, and other critters attracted by the lights and things that feed on them.

---

LED’s don’t emit UV and put off less heat, which is what attracts bugs. If you are the only lights around, you will still attract them, but they would be more likely to head for a street light or someone else’s incandescents if you are in a neighborhood

I have led landscape lights that face upward toward my house. The front porch ceiling gets covered in bugs and I have to wash it down every few months. I was thinking about installing soffit lighting and hoping to get rid of the bugs and crap that attach themselves to the ceiling and die but it sounds like it might not help much.

Ok thanks. I’ll give it a shot.

Soffit lighting belongs on prisons only.