The word is free
Custom is on every website in this trade. It costs nothing to say and it is not a claim anybody checks. The test is not the word. It is whether anything was drawn before you were asked to decide.That is the whole distinction, and it is worth holding onto while you compare quotes. A package is a price with a description attached. A design begins at your house. Both can be perfectly honest pieces of business. Only one of them is designed for you, and you deserve to know which you have.
What a design contains
A real design specifies the property, not the product. It names the exact runs and the exact features, rather than describing the front of the house in general terms. It says what color temperature the everyday setting will be. It says where the controller mounts and how the wiring runs. And it accounts for what stays dark, deliberately.
Order of operations
A price without a design is a guess wearing a decimal point. Two quotes a few hundred dollars apart can describe completely
https://evercrestlighting.com/about/ different jobs. When the design comes first, the comparison is honest. When the price comes first, scope gets trimmed to hit it.A plan you understand gives you something to check the finished job against, which is worth more than any assurance given in a driveway.
Your part in the design
Expect to be asked things, rather than pitched. Where do you walk after dark. Do you use the back yard in the evening. Are you buying December or every night. Do you host. The way you use the property matters as much as the shape of the house, and nobody can guess it.
Where a plan earns its keep
Most properties need more than one kind of lighting. Bought separately over several years, they never quite agree: different whites, different intensities, competing focal points. Designed together, they read as one thing even when the budget spreads the work across phases.
The design is a conversation
The first plan is not meant to be final. If a run looks wrong to you, say so. A company that will not alter the plan is not really designing for you. Ask how many rounds are normal before you sign anything.
The plan should end up in your hands
Ask for a copy, and keep it. It matters when you sell, if you phase the rest of it, or when somebody needs to know what is buried in that bed. The design is part of what you bought.
Where to start
It starts on site, because that is where the building and the way you use it are both visible. EverCrest Lighting does custom outdoor lighting design and installation across permanent, landscape, accent, patio and security work for homes and businesses across Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina, from Greenville. The consultation is free. Call (864) 252-1732 or email
[email protected].