Northern Ohio is cold in the winter, so late summer and early fall are the best times to install landscape lighting. The ground is workable for burying low-voltage wire and plants are at full size so every fixture is placed around the mature landscape.
If you’ve tried to figure out when the best time to install landscape lighting around here is, then you’ve probably seen conflicting advice. Some sources say September is the best time of year. Others argue that it’s best to install systems in winter. But few sources of advice can take into account the local climate, so here’s the Northern Ohio version.
The constraint that matters up here is not cold air, it is frozen ground. Burying low-voltage wire and setting fixtures becomes very difficult once the ground freezes hard. That means your installation will need to happen while the soil is workable and you ideally still have some outdoor living weeks left to enjoy. That’s why we recommend late summer or early fall.
Timing the install to the season also makes the design better. Plants are at full mature size by late summer, which helps a lot when it comes to aiming light fixtures. Light fixtures can be added in spring, to be sure, but it’s hard to predict how plants will fill in, so those fixtures might very well end up being swallowed in the same bed by August. Late-season placement tends to be more accurate. It also helps that around this time of year, darkness arrives early enough to run a proper nighttime demo and fine-tune the system at a reasonable hour, instead of waiting past nine in June.
There is one more practical reason to start sooner rather than later. Fall is the run-up to holiday and roofline lighting season. It is exactly when outdoor lighting installers' schedules tighten. Knowing when to schedule outdoor lighting around that rush is often the difference between lighting the yard this year and waiting until spring.
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives serves Mentor and the Lake County suburbs, along with Willoughby, Painesville, Chesterland, and Chardon. If you’re thinking about installing outdoor lights this season, the easiest first step is to book a free nighttime design consultation online or call (440) 336-8650.