Ask your electrician to install these low wattage LED landscape lights or do it yourself and start enjoying your landscaping every night without worrying about your electric bill!
With the cost savings of just the electricity, low-voltage LED landscape lights are one of the most cost-effective energy upgrades you can make and will give you a break even in just 1-3 years depending upon whether you install it yourself or pay a professional to do it.
Add the savings in cost and maintenance for not having to replace lightbulbs frequently and replacing your landscape lighting with LED landscape lighting should be at the top of your list for energy upgrades. If you’re doing a new installation, LED landscape lighting should be the only choice. As you will see below, LED landscape lighting is actually less expensive to install.
These LED lights are high-quality and are available in 1W, 3W & 6W ! Make no mistake, even the 1W light is extremely bright. The 6W light is equivalent to 50W. The color is an extremely pleasant white light and is not harsh. The color really shows up your landscaping, plants, and especially evergreens. MR-16 bulbs made my Colorado Blue Spruce look dingy but the LED highlights the blue int the Blue Spruce and make evergreens look green. I have been using these lights at my house since last year and love them.
LED landscape lights at the front of my house are all 3W 12V LED bullet lights by Aquascape (Front door has an overhead 18W SYLVANIA Ultra LED)
The amount of money you will save in electricity will give you a breakeven probably within one year, depending upon the costs of electricity where you live. You’ll be able to light up both the front of your house and backyard for only $1 to $6 per month. With 53 LED lights totaling 90 W (see below) turning on automatically at sundown and off at midnight 365 days per year, at the price I pay for electricity which is approximately $0.23 per KW, my usage costs approximately $45.33 per year or $3.77 per month. My landscape lights have been on every night for a year now and I have not noticed any difference on my electric bill. You will save even more money and work because you won’t have to purchase and replace MR-16 light bulbs frequently because LEDs last for 25,000 hours.
Calculate how much electricity and money you will save with this electricity cost calculator.
The best LED landscape lights I found are Aquascape and DG LIGHTS. Both Aquascape and DG LIGHTS are really well made. Everyone will especially like the price of these 12V LED landscape lights from The Pond Outlet which are the best prices I have found and not much more expensive than cheap low-voltage lights. I purchased Aquascape lights from Richard at ThePondOutlet.com which not only has the best price but also the best service. Electricians and landscape lighting installers can call Rich at The Pond Outlet to get the contractor price which is less expensive than the contractor price from the manufacturer.
I purchased just over 36 1W LED bullet lights; 3 1W LED Waterfall lights; 11 3W LED bullet lights & 3 6W LED bullet lights by Aquascape for the front and back yard.
DGLIGHTS 12V LED lights use a little more wattage, provide more light and are more expensive than Aquascape lights. If you are trying to light a very large tree or a mansion, DGLIGHTS 12V LED lights are the LED lights you’re looking for. Electricians and landscape lighting installers should call DGLIGHTS to get the contractor price sheet.
Backyard lights are all 1W LED bullet lights each lighting a boulder with one 3W lighting the tree at the back of the photo
Two waterfalls (15′ & 25′) – all lights including waterfall lights are 1W LED except two 3W lights on the Weeping Pine hanging over the waterfalls)
The waterfall pumps are 1,000W each but my lights are only 1 W!
Advantages of LED Landscape Lights
Besides the tremendous cost savings in electricity and replacing lightbulbs, two other advantages of installing 12V LED lights is that you can use far fewer runs and use 12 gauge instead of 10 gauge landscape wire without worrying about voltage drop. This results in saving money on wire and the cost of labor with fewer runs. LED lights can tolerate more voltage drop without losing brightness. My property is approximately 170′ D x 137′ W and I used two runs in the backyard and one run for the front yard with 12 gauge copper braided landscape wire. The LED lights at the end of the runs are just as bright as the LED lights at the beginning of the runs. Another cost saving is the need for smaller transformers. I installed one 150 W transformer for the two runs in the backyard and one 60W transformer for the front yard run. The Transformers are installed in the basement and connected to timer switches. Be sure to protect your LED landscape light transformers and other electric components and appliances with a whole house surge protector.
Aquascape LED lights are extremely easy to install because they come with 25′ leads with watertight plugs. I paid my sprinkler company to dig the trenches and bury the 12v line runs. I then connected 3-way splitters also available from ThePondOutlet.com (at the bottom of the their page) and plugged the lights in.
Landscape Wire Connectors
I don’t know how DGLIGHTS LED fixtures are connected but even without connectors, they can easily be connected by anyone without any special training or prior experience. Although the lights I used have plugs, after plugging them into the 3-way splitters I still had to connect the 3-way splitters to the 12v runs so I cut off the male end of the splitters and connected them to the runs using Blazing Pro Series Waterproof Landscape Wire Connectors.
Blazing Pro Series Waterproof Landscape Wire Connectors are pricey but they are the Rolls-Royce of wire connectors and should always be the preferred connector for landscape wiring, especially for professionals such as electricians and landscape lighting installers because the last thing you want is a call back because water leaked into a wire connector or a wire pulled out of a wire connector. Do-it-yourselfers should also spend a little extra money for these because no one wants to do it again. Not only are these connectors waterproof but they create quick, easy (simply strip the end of the wire, insert and close the clip) and solid connections which will not let the wire pull out. Blazing Pro Series Waterproof Landscape Wire Connectors are difficult to find because they are made for and available at Kichler but I also found them at Amazon.com.
Another good landscape wire connector is the Blazing LV9500 Snap Locking direct burial splice (DBR) used to connect landscape light fixtures to the main cable. The cap is filled with silicon and sealed shut making a water tight seal. The company claims the wires cannot pull out of splice like they do with silicon filled wire caps but I found that is not true with 12/2 wire. These wire connectors are a very interesting design which allows wires to be inserted through the bottom of a piece, then out and down the side with the wire resting in a small cut out. The piece holding the wire is then inserted into the silicone filled cap. The problem is that the small cut out is too small for 12/2 wire twisted with the fixture wire so that the twisted wire doesn’t fit into the cut out. The result is that when using 12/2 wire, the wire can pull out so it is pull resistant. This is a really nice landscape wire connector but no comparison to the Blazing Pro Series Waterproof Landscape Wire Connectors. You can find the Blazing LV9500 landscape where connectors at LandscapeLightingWorld.com.
Landscape Wire
Landscape wire is also available at LandscapeLightingWorld.com. As mentioned above, with LED lighting you can most likely use 12 gauge instead of 10 gauge landscape wire because LED bulbs are not as affected by voltage drop. My longest run in the backyard is probably 160 feet using 12 gauge copper braided landscape wire and there is no noticeable dimming of the LED light.