Tarrant County's oldest town, and the one place where the festive season genuinely changes what people want all year.
Grapevine is the oldest surviving city in Tarrant County. Families from Platte County, Missouri settled the Grape Vine Prairie in 1844 — the name comes from the wild grapes growing on it — and the town that grew there kept its centre. Main Street is a National Register historic district: six blocks carrying more than sixty sites of architectural and historic importance, including the Cotton Belt Depot, returned to the street in 1992.
We have worked here a good deal, and the eight photographs further down this page are all Grapevine properties, shot after dark on the night each system was set. The town also does something to our trade that no other town in the Metroplex does: it brands itself the Christmas Capital of Texas, and the standard that sets locally means a Grapevine client asks about the festive season at the first visit rather than in November. That is worth planning for from the start, and this page explains why.
Everywhere else, landscape lighting and festive lighting are two separate purchases made at two separate times of year. In Grapevine they are not, because the expectation on a street here in December is set by a town that has made a civic identity out of it. If you are going to do both eventually, deciding that at the design visit rather than two years later saves real money and produces a better result.
The reason is infrastructure. A permanent landscape system puts power, a transformer and switched outputs around the outside of your house. A festive installation needs power at the roofline, at the trees and at the drive, which is precisely where the landscape system is already going. Specify the transformer with headroom and drop a feed at the eave while the cable is already open, and the December install becomes a two-hour job on existing circuits instead of a run of extension leads out of the garage.
If you would rather not put anything up and take it down at all, the permanent festive LED page covers the fixed system that sits in a roofline trim all year and is invisible in daylight, and the holiday lighting page covers the seasonal install and takedown.
A six-block National Register district at the centre of a small city does something to the houses around it. The vocabulary of Main Street — brick commercial frontages, timber porches, deep shopfront recesses, the depot — is what a Grapevine resident's eye is calibrated to, and a lighting scheme that ignores it looks out of place here in a way it would not in a newer town.
In practice that means restraint and warmth. Where an elevation has brick, it wants a wide even wash from far enough back that the wall reads as a single plane, rather than a row of bright scallops from fixtures set too close. Where it has a recessed entry or a porch, the light belongs inside the recess so the opening reads as depth. Where there is a detail worth finding — a bracket, a stone sill course, a gable vent — one tight beam does more than three wide ones.
Colour temperature carries more weight here than most people expect. The historic district is lit warm, and a house running a cool white scheme on the same street reads as blue and modern next to it even when the design is otherwise good. We run warm throughout as standard and will not supply a cool lamp on a period elevation without saying plainly why we think it is a mistake.
If your property is inside a designated area, what may be fixed to a street-facing elevation can be constrained. You get a written plan showing exactly what goes where and what attaches to the building, which is the document a reviewer will want to see — and we would encourage you to confirm the current requirements for your address with the city before anything is fixed.
Grapevine is bounded on the north by Grapevine Lake, a Corps of Engineers reservoir, and on the south by DFW Airport. Both edges produce lots that need something different from the ones in the middle.
On the lake side, properties back onto Corps land and look out over water that is genuinely dark. The discipline is the same one that applies on any shoreline: nothing aims outward over the water, because there is nothing out there to catch the light and all an outward-aimed fixture achieves is a bright point visible from the far shore. Light the near ground, leave the surface black, and the depth takes care of itself. Lots here also need less output overall, because the eye adapts to the dark boundary.
On the airport side, the ambient light level is high — apron lighting, approach lighting and a sky that never fully darkens. Contrast is what you lose first, and the instinct to answer it by turning everything up is wrong; it just raises the floor. What works is tighter beams on fewer subjects, so the lit things are clearly lit and the unlit things stay genuinely unlit. A restrained scheme reads better against a bright sky than a generous one does.
The middle of town, where most of the photographs below were taken, is neither: ordinary lots, mature trees, and the normal business of lighting a house well.
The gallery below is Grapevine work rather than stock photography or a rendering, and it is worth saying what you are looking at, because night photographs of lighting all tend to look similar at a glance.
What to look for is where the fixtures are not. In a scheme we are happy with, you should be unable to find the light sources in the photograph — you see lit brick, lit canopy and lit path, and the fixtures themselves are behind planting, under an eave or beyond the frame. Glare in a photograph means glare on the night, and a bright dot in shot is a fixture somebody could see from a window.
The second thing to look at is the dark. In every one of these there is more unlit than lit, and that is deliberate: contrast is what makes a lit thing read as lit. A garden with everything illuminated has no subject and photographs flat. If you compare quotes, that is the most reliable difference between a designed scheme and a priced fixture count — the buyer's guide goes through the rest of what to look for.
Eight Grapevine properties, photographed on the night the systems were set. Every one is a TC Lighting installation, shot on the property at night — no stock imagery and no renderings. Click any of them to see it full screen.
No Grapevine client has written to us yet, so rather than dress a letter from somewhere else up as a local one, here are three from elsewhere in the service area with the towns they were written from. All thirty-one are on the reviews page in full.
“We are extremely impressed with Todd and his installation team and highly recommend him to anyone seeking professional landscape lighting services. We retained him to replace and expand our pool area landscape lights with a much better LED lighting solution…”
“Todd / TC Lighting was remarkably responsive. Quick to visit with me to create a vision for my backyard lighting. Todd instinctively knew what I wanted and what I needed. The crew did a terrific job in upgrading my lighting. The team went above and beyond. Bonus — the price is reasonable…”
“I'm so pleased with the landscape lighting recommendation. Todd and his team did an amazing job on our lighting! Thank you again. Khurrum and I really appreciate it.”
Tarrant County, between Grapevine Lake and DFW Airport, about eighteen miles west of Carrollton. Free on-site design visit, and Todd comes out himself.
Grapevine, TX · inside the TC Lighting service area · free on-site design visit
Landscape lighting is the bulk of the work, but it is not all of it. Every service below is available on a Grapevine property, from the same crew and the same licensed Texas electrical contractor.
Design and installation — uplighting, moonlighting, path and specimen work.
Read more →Seasonal install, maintained through the season, taken down and stored.
Read more →Govee-type colour-changing track set into the eave line. Invisible by day.
Read more →Halogen to LED on an existing system, keeping the runs and fixtures worth keeping.
Read more →Car parks, drives, steps, walls and seating areas, residential and commercial.
Read more →Inside work from the same licensed electrical contractor.
Read more →Cameras and doorbells fitted and wired properly.
Read more →Diagnosing and rebuilding failing systems, including ones we did not install.
Read more →Or start here: the home page for the whole picture, about Todd Cormier for who turns up, the photo gallery for the work itself, reviews for what clients say, and contact to reach us directly.
Yes, regularly. The eight photographs on this page are all Grapevine properties, shot after dark on the night each system was set -- no stock imagery and no renderings.
In Grapevine, almost always yes. A festive install needs power at the roofline, the trees and the drive, which is exactly where the landscape cable is already going. Sizing the transformer with headroom and dropping a feed at the eave while the trenches are open turns the December job into a couple of hours on existing circuits.
Yes. A permanent festive LED system sits in a trim at the roofline, is effectively invisible in daylight, and is controlled by zone and colour, so it runs for Christmas and then for whatever else you want it for. It is covered on the permanent festive LED page.
Two things. Nothing aims outward over the water, because there is nothing out there to catch the light and it simply shows as a bright point from the far shore. And you need less total output than a lot in the middle of town, because your eye adapts to the dark lake behind the garden.
Yes, but by contrast rather than brightness. High ambient light steals contrast first, and turning everything up only raises the floor. Tighter beams on fewer subjects, with the rest left genuinely unlit, reads far better against a bright sky.
It is a conversation to have at the design visit rather than afterwards, because what may be fixed to a street-facing elevation can be constrained. We bring a written plan with a fixed price and dates that can be handed to whoever approves it. Confirm current requirements for your address with the city.
Four fields, about fifteen seconds. Send the address and what you are hoping to light. Todd walks the property himself, in daylight, and you get a written plan with a fixed price and dates before any work begins.
Prefer to talk? Call (972) 345-1180.