Outdoor Lighting · Automation

Outdoor lighting automation for Houston patios and pools.

2026-09-21 · Obsidian Audio Video · Houston

Houston's outdoor living spaces are used year-round — patios, pools, outdoor kitchens, and lanais are extensions of the home. But most outdoor lighting is still controlled by a single switch inside the house. Outdoor lighting automation fixes this — and in Houston's climate, it needs to be done right. Outdoor lighting in Houston has two requirements: you need lighting that you can control from your phone, your keypad, or your voice, and it needs to survive 90% humidity, 100-degree summers, and the occasional hurricane.

What to automate outdoors

Outdoor lighting automation isn't just about turning lights on and off. It's about creating scenes — "Entertain" dims the path lights, brings up the pergola string lights, and turns the pool to a color. "Evening" brings up landscape uplighting on the oak trees. "Goodnight" turns everything off except the security floodlights. Here's what we typically automate on a Houston outdoor project:

• Landscape lighting: Path lights, uplighting on trees, architectural wall washing. Set on an astronomic timeclock that adjusts for sunset times throughout the year — critical in Houston where sunset ranges from 5:25 PM in January to 8:25 PM in June.
• Patio and pergola lighting: Recessed ceiling lights, string lights, ceiling fans with light kits. We use Lutron Caséta or RadioRA 3 outdoor modules for dimmable control.
• Pool and spa lighting: Underwater pool lights, spa lights, deck lighting. Most pool lighting uses proprietary controllers (Pentair IntelliBrite, Hayward ColorLogic), but we integrate these into Crestron, Control4, or Savant so pool lights respond to the same scenes as the rest of the outdoor lighting.
• Security lighting: Floodlights on motion sensors or triggered by doorbell cameras. Integrated with the smart home system so a motion event can trigger all outdoor lights to full brightness and send an alert to your phone.
• Outdoor kitchen: Task lighting over the grill, under-cabinet lighting, ambient lighting. These need wet-location-rated fixtures and GFCI-protected circuits.

Houston-specific considerations

Houston's climate is brutal on outdoor equipment. The combination of heat, humidity, UV radiation, and occasional flooding creates challenges that integrators in other parts of the country simply don't face. Here's what matters for outdoor lighting in Houston:

• Weatherproof fixtures: Houston's humidity, heat, and rain require fixtures rated for wet locations (IP65+ minimum). We prefer IP67 or IP68 for fixtures near pool decks and splash zones. Every fixture gets silicone-sealed connections — not the twist-on wire nuts that electricians use indoors.
• UV degradation: Houston's sun degrades plastic lenses and gaskets in 2–3 years. We use brass, copper, or marine-grade stainless steel fixtures. The initial cost is higher than a plastic path light, but metal fixtures last far longer.
• Flooding: Low-voltage landscape lighting should be rated for occasional submersion. Transformers mounted at ground level are exposed to flood water, as Hurricane Harvey showed across the region. We mount transformers and control panels at least 24 inches above the 500-year flood plain, and use waterproof enclosures (NEMA 4X rated).
• Heat load on transformers: Houston's ambient temperatures mean landscape lighting transformers run hotter than their rated capacity. We always derate transformers by 20% — a 600W transformer runs no more than 480W of lighting — to prevent premature failure.

Control systems for outdoor lighting

The control platform matters. We typically install Lutron RadioRA 3 for outdoor lighting because the system supports astronomic timeclocks, has outdoor-rated keypads and dimmers, and integrates with Crestron, Control4, and Savant for whole-home control. For a full-home automation project, the outdoor lighting is just another zone in the system. "Sunset" triggers the landscape lights, "Pool Party" changes the pool lights to blue and brings up the deck lighting, and "All Off" at midnight turns everything off except the security floods. The key is reliability — the system needs to work when you have guests over and it needs to work when you're away on vacation and the lights need to come on at sunset to make the house look occupied.

What drives the cost

The cost depends on the number of fixtures and their material, the number of transformers and outdoor keypads, whether pool lighting is integrated (which depends on the pool controller), and whether audio and video are part of the project. The investment pays off in usability, security, and the fact that you won't be replacing corroded fixtures every two years.

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