Illuminated Concepts, founded by Chuck Evans in 1988, creates award-winning, outdoor lighting design for residences and commercial entities in the Southern California counties of Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego.

Evans, who got his first taste of the industry in New York by doing stage lighting with special effects set to music, pyrotechnical flashes, and innovative projections, started his current business by designing and installing Christmas lighting displays. Soon after he moved on to overall landscape lighting.
By 2005, Illuminated Concepts had designed outdoor lighting/landscape lighting for over 5,000 custom installations in Southern California.

A Pacific View
The project featured here, was for the Wu Estate located in the exclusive enclave of Newport Coast. Evans' assignment was to completely renovate the old, out-of-date landscape lighting system with new cast brass LED fixtures, and a comprehensive redesign.

To accomplish this, it took 197 fixtures and four transformers with astronomical timers. The lights included MR-16 bullet lights, MR-11 bullet lights, bullet lights with adjustable shields, mini wall washers, underwater lights, mini path lights and regular path lights.

The overall goal was to accent and enhance the many architectural and landscape features of this distinctive home. "When I present a lighting design proposal, I emphasize the effects and not the fixture selection," Evans states. He relies on fixtures that have drop-in lamps so he can choose from a multitude of LEDs with varied wattages and beam spreads. This gives him the flexibility to use the exact lamps to create a desired effect.

The Front Yard
Here, it was important to accent the fine architectural features of the home. According to Evans, this was achieved with a combination of facade graze lighting and shadow lighting.

"I love to create texture with lighting," he states. There were two ways he set out to accomplish this.

 

The first was with accenting the stone and brickwork.

"We do this by placing the lighting fixture close to the vertical surface, which pulls the texture of these interesting stone surfaces," reveals Evans, and adds that many times after completing this technique, the clients will really notice the details of their custom masonry work for the first time.

The second means to create texture was with shadow lighting and/or moonlighting.
Besides the main goal of the outdoor lighting in the front of the home, Illuminated Concepts added some safety and security lighting. This included eliminating tripping hazards at the entry and on the walkway of the home.

Evans expresses that, "The lack of illumination on the front steps created a danger at the entry. We illuminated the steps with a combination of moonlighting shining down on the steps walkway and utilized small MR-11 bullet light fixtures peering out of the large pots shining down each side of the steps."

The design also called for illuminating the driveway with downlights equipped with glare shields. These lights were mounted on the tall palm trees.

In addition, the ambient lighting in the front patio seating area was increased with moonlights from nearby trees.

Succulents and small bushes in pots were accented with mini floods and MR-11 bullets. The fountain and its attractive features were highlighted with uplights and a glow was created in the front yard's glass wall with mounted lamps.

Back and Side Yards Objectives and Lighting Techniques
This started with what Evans calls inside out lighting.

"The client wanted to have great views when they look through the kitchen and living room windows," he explains. "I think this is some of the most important elements of this project because these interior views are seen every night.

Another fountain was accented with underwater up lights to emphasize the spills of the fountain's center.

Potted water feature spills lining the back of the pool were accented by lights shot across the pool. Downlighting was employed to illuminate a barbecue grill and counter. Underneath the counter a soft glow was created with a linear LED rope light.

The ambient lighting in the backyard was increased with moonlighting installed in nearby trees. This also created a textured effect of a dappling of light and darkness on the patio deck.

To reduce trip hazards, step areas were installed with path lights. And as an added accent to the design, agaves were silhouetted with backlights.

Looking Back, Looking Forward
Even with being a relatively large project for his company, lasting about three weeks, Evans admits that they really didn't have many challenges that they hadn't faced before. One small difficulty was locating and changing outdated wiring in the fountains, which was remedied with the help of a wire location tool.

"What separates my outdoor lighting company from others is this specific on-the-spot final tweaking of the lamp design and implementation," he says. "Since we paint a scene with lighting, it is appropriate to use an analogy of a paintbrush. If you have a high-quality top-of-the-line paintbrush, who do you want to paint your portrait? A skilled artist who has lots of training and experience."

And, always putting a focus on advancement, he sees a bright future abetted by more designs incorporating the latest technology.