Not more light. Better contrast.

Solid brass and copper, low-voltage, with integrated or replaceable LED lamps at 3000K — the full specification is published. Installed, that runs from $250 per fixture — hardware, wire, trenching, labour and commissioning together — rising to about $400 on estate grounds, where wire and transformers scale faster than fixture count does. A custom finish or optic adds about $150, and the minimum project is $3,000. Brass is specified because it doesn't corrode — it patinas to a dark bronze over three or four seasons and then stays stable for decades. Aluminum, which is what most package systems use, pits and chalks within about six years in Ontario, and faster near road salt or pool decks; once water gets into the housing the wire fails next. Our fixtures carry a lifetime warranty against corrosion and housing failure, which is a claim only brass makes affordable to honour.

Because 3000K is warm white — close to the colour of an incandescent lamp — and it's what makes brick, limestone, cedar and foliage look like themselves once they're lit. Go cooler and the property turns commercial: at 4000K green foliage reads grey-blue and stonework looks bleached, which is why a parking lot and a garden should never share a lamp. Warm light also produces less glare at the same perceived brightness, so a 3000K system runs at lower output and still reads clearly. We install 3000K on every project. If a client insists on cooler, we'll do it — with a written note that we advised against it.

Fixture housings and the sealed connections we install: corrosion, water ingress and mechanical failure of the brass or copper body, for as long as you own the property. LED lamps and drivers carry their manufacturer's warranty, typically five to seven years, and we replace those at cost during a maintenance visit if they fail after that. What isn't covered is physical damage — a fixture run over by a lawnmower, hit by a plow, or dug up by a landscaper. Those get replaced at fixture cost with no labour charge if we're already on site.

Sometimes, and the $195 inspection is how we find out. Good brass fixtures on a properly sized transformer can usually be absorbed into a new design — we re-aim them, replace lamps, and extend zones. Pitted aluminum housings, twist-cap connections in soil, or a transformer already loaded past 90% of rating are all reasons to start over. The inspection documents every fixture, zone and connection in writing and tells you which category you're in. Roughly half of the existing systems we inspect keep at least their transformer and trunk wire.

Four things, in the order homeowners notice them. It returns the elevation you paid for — a facade, an entry and a specimen tree read from the street again instead of going flat at eight o'clock. It makes grade safe: steps, level changes and the drive-to-walk transition stop being guesswork. It adds hours to a yard you already built, because a lit patio and a lit path back to the house get used in September and October. And an occupied-looking property on a timer deters more than a motion floodlight does, without the glare.

More than anything else on the property. Forty degrees of swing between January and July works at every gasket and connection; frost heave rotates a staked fixture a few degrees over a winter, which is enough to slide a pool of light off a trunk; road salt and pool chloride attack housings; and plows find whatever sits too close to the drive. That is the whole argument for solid brass, gel-filled direct-burial connectors, wire at depth and one re-aiming visit a year. Aluminum systems installed with twist caps are the ones we get called to replace at year six.

The brass outlives the mortgage. Realistically: fixtures 25 years and up, LED lamps five to ten years depending on run hours and heat, transformers 10 to 15 years, and wire indefinitely if it was buried at depth with sealed joints. What actually changes is the property — trees grow into the beams, beds fill in and hide fixtures, and grade shifts with frost. That's why maintenance is re-aiming first and repair second. A system that gets walked once a year looks the way it did at commissioning a decade later.