Accent Outdoor Lighting Designs Add Layers of Value To Your Home
Adding value to your home is an important consideration when deciding what improvements to make. Many fad home investments that are trendy now can end up being out of style by the time you go to sell your house so you want to hit things that will be of value not just today, but also when you go to sell your home in the future. There are things that will always add value such as good landscaping, a pool, and a well-made deck. Adding outdoor accent lighting to those things can increase their value even more.
John Gidding, host of HGTV’s “Curb Appeal” and Logo TV’s “Secret Guide to Fabulous” stated that a conservative return on investment (ROI) for a lighting system would be 150% of the cost of the lighting but, he has seen it return up to 1000% in a few instances (Gidding, 2015). Dollar for dollar return on investment averages about 150% to 250% (Chodorov, 2015) meaning that each dollar spent on the lighting system will yield $1.50 to $2.50 in value of the house. The reason Gidding spoke of the ROI being up to 1000% in some instances is that a lighting system enhances other features of the home.
A pool that is well lit will have a higher value than one that is not lit or lit only with Christmas lights or tiki torches. A deck, likewise, will have a greater value when it is well lit. These additional values are not included in the direct ROI; they are a second layer of value a lighting system adds to a property. The outdoor landscape and architectural lighting systems will add to the value of those other features you add because they make the home safer, decreasing the risk of an accident, and they showcase the features and make the space more usable at night.
The other layer of value lighting ads is in the salability of the house. When you go to sell your home, the book value is only the starting point to make the final sale. If there are other, comparable homes in the area you may end up having to lower the price to be competitive so the ROI for features added may not be what you expect. Lighting systems add to the curb appeal of your house and not just that; lighting systems add to the curb appeal of every feature of your house. Curb appeal is ranked consistently among the top 5 things people look for in a house (Gordon, 2015). People want to be stunned by a property and as much as 69% ranked curb appeal as one of the top 3 things they look for when considering a house with only number of bedrooms and bathrooms ahead of it.
Here in Florida people are looking for that perfect slice of heaven to call their very own. It is the tropical dream that draws people to the area; the idea that they deserve the reward of a home that is a vision of paradise. Lighting helps fulfill this. The use of a well-planned lighting design can transform features and fixtures into parts of a vision of tropical bliss. That is what is meant when we say that outdoor lighting is multilayered in its return on investment. It not only generates value it also helps to sell your home.
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Gidding, J. (2015) The Washington Post
Chodorov, J (2015) The Washington Post
Gordon, L.K. (2015) House Logic
