Many of us spend more time at home after dark than during daylight hours. After spending tens of thousands of dollars to create a beautiful landscape, not being able to see it at night is a terrible waste. Spending less than 10% more on a landscape can double the enjoyment we receive from our landscape when applied to landscape lighting.

There is one instance where landscape lighting does not make sense: Because almost all real-estate transactions occur during daylight hours it is not a good investment to install landscape lighting SOLELY for the purpose of selling your home.

Typically it makes sense to use high-voltage lights when the fixtures are attached directly to your house and/or when you want to use high-powered flood lights that require more than around fifty watts of light. High voltage lights are typically three to five times more expensive to install and are simultaneously more dangerous if a wire gets cut or a connection gets wet. Because of that, you want to have a good reason to do it. 

In the case of fixtures attached directly to a house, they may be easier to control from an indoor switch or a motion sensor (there are still relatively few motion sensor options for low-voltage lights).