"You actually need the dark to define the light and create contrast, otherwise everything goes flat.”
– SIMON SIMKIN, PRESIDENT, SUPER-LITE
The one mistake you don’t want to make is setting up bright lights everywhere and drowning your property with floodlights. “Shrubs, trees, garden, even the crowns of trees, all those things create visual interest in your yard. They will create areas of light and some areas of dark — you actually need the dark to define the light and create contrast, otherwise every- thing goes flat,” says Simon Simkin, president of Super-Lite, a company
providing home lighting since 1950. “People want atmosphere and ambi- ance, and the way to do that is being able to control the lights.”
the winter against that highly reflec- tive white snow,” Simkin explains. He says he’s used dimming on his exterior lights for years — his other strategy is timing. “A programmable in-wall timer can replace your wall switch,” he says. “You can tell it what latitude you’re at so it knows when sunrise and sunset are, and it can be programmed for dusk until dawn or until a set time.”
You can control the lights with dimming, timing, positioning and colour.
“People ask: Why would I want to dim my lights in winter? It’s because what is enough light in the summer when you’ve got everything dark and lush and green becomes too much light in
FALL 2024 PARADE of HOMES 27
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