Cross Timbers ground, big lots and the most easily damaged tree in North Texas.
Keller sits just north of Fort Worth, on the Cross Timbers side of the Metroplex. Like Colleyville and Southlake either side of it, it kept the shape of the rural land it grew out of: generous lots, deep setbacks, and stands of native post oak that are older than most of the houses.
The photographs further down are from a Keller property finished this month, and they are a fair picture of what the work looks like here: one big tree doing most of the lifting, a brick elevation washed rather than spotlit, and a courtyard at the back lit low enough to sit in.
Post oak is the defining tree of this part of the Metroplex and the one that punishes careless work. Its roots are shallow and spread well beyond the edge of the canopy, it has almost no tolerance for grade change or trenching inside the dripline, and it declines slowly — three or four years later, long after anyone would connect the decline to a trench. They grow slowly and transplant badly, so a mature one lost is lost for a generation.
So on a Keller property the first design decision is usually negative: where the wire is not going to go. Runs take the long way round driplines. Anything that must pass near a tree goes in by the least invasive method available rather than the fastest. Mounting hardware goes on so nothing girdles a limb as it thickens.
Lit, post oak is a different subject from the live oaks twenty miles east. The crown is more open and the limbs are crooked and characterful, so the branch structure is the feature — it takes uplighting far better than it works as a downlight host. Where a property also has pecan or bur oak, those are usually the better moonlighting trees.
Two things are consistently true of a Keller lot. The soil is sandier Cross Timbers ground rather than Blackland clay, which is good news: without the seasonal shrink-and-swell cycle, a properly set fixture stays pointed where it was put, and systems here need re-aiming noticeably less often than their equivalents in Dallas or Plano. The trade-off is erosion, which moves sandy soil off slopes and can leave shallow cable sitting proud after a couple of heavy seasons.
The second is distance. On an acre-plus lot the far fixtures can be two to four hundred feet of cable from the transformer, and low-voltage cable loses voltage over that distance. Under-fed LEDs do not dim gracefully the way old halogen lamps did; they hold up and then start flickering or failing to strike. Getting it right is arithmetic before anything is buried — cable gauge chosen per run, hub layouts rather than one long daisy chain, the transformer placed where the load actually is, and spare capacity left for the pool or outbuilding that arrives later.
Worth walking through, because it is a plain example rather than a showpiece. The front of the house is washed, not spotlit: the brick and the stone surround at the entry are grazed from close in at low level, so the texture reads and the mortar lines pick up, instead of one bright fixture flattening the whole elevation from the lawn. The shrub line along the foundation is lit from behind and below, which is what gives the planting depth rather than turning it into a hedge-shaped silhouette.
The tree is doing most of the work. There is a single large canopy over the front lawn, and the shadow fan you can see thrown across the grass and the walk is light coming down through it from above. That one decision is worth more than any number of ground fixtures: it lights the lawn, the path and the driveway edge at once, and it does it with a pattern that moves slightly in wind rather than sitting there as a hard pool.
Note what you cannot see in any of the five frames. No fixture is visible, there is no glare source pointing at the camera, and nothing is aimed across the property line. The driveway and the front walk are legible from the spill and the canopy pattern alone, with no row of path lights down either side — which is the single most common thing we are asked to take back out of somebody else's installation.
Round the back, the courtyard is a different brief: a pool, a covered patio and planting close in on three sides. It is lit low and warm, with the brick washed gently, the beds picked out individually, and the pool left to do what water does after dark, which is to collect and double everything lit around it. Levels are kept down because the point of a courtyard is sitting in it, and nobody sits comfortably in a lit car park.
Keller is really two places to light, and the reason is in how it grew. The townsite was platted in 1881, the year the Texas and Pacific line between Fort Worth and Texarkana opened, and it was renamed within about a year after John C. Keller, a construction foreman on that railroad. It then stayed a farming town for the better part of a century — it did not incorporate as a city until 1955, by the city's own history — before the Metroplex arrived around it. The 2020 census counted 45,776 people.
What that leaves is a small older core on modest lots near the original townsite, where the trees are the oldest in the city and the neighbours are close, surrounded by a much larger ring of houses built through the growth decades on the acre-plus lots that give Keller its reputation. The two ask for almost opposite things.
On the older, tighter lots the discipline is restraint and aim: lower levels than people expect, shielded fixtures, and the plan checked after dark from the far side of the fence as well as from your own back door, because on a lot that size your lighting is also your neighbour's. On the big lots the problem is the one above — distance, voltage, transformers in more than one place, and a design that still reads as one property rather than as four separately lit corners of it.
Five photographs from a Keller project finished this month — the front elevation from three distances, and the pool courtyard behind it. 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 Keller 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.
“Bill and I recently had our landscape lighting revamped. When we had planned to only change light bulbs, we found that we had bigger problems with electrical shorts, leaking fixtures, etc. We needed the work done quickly and TC Lighting was recommended by a landscape lighting supply company here in Richardson…”
“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.”
“Todd has a talent for outdoor lighting. He has honed his craft for many years and takes pride in creating a masterpiece of art using outdoor lighting. Look at his portfolio of work and you will see creativity and art in each project. He is honest and trustworthy…”
Just north of Fort Worth, on the Cross Timbers side of the Metroplex. Free on-site design visit, and Todd comes out himself.
Keller, 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 Keller 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 to both. Keller is in Tarrant County, one of the five counties we cover, and it is a straightforward run from Carrollton. The five photographs on this page are from a Keller project finished this month, shot after dark on the property.
It can, if it is done carelessly, and the damage shows up years later rather than at the time. Post oak roots spread wider than the canopy and hate disturbance. We route around driplines rather than through them even when that means a much longer run, use the least invasive method where something has to pass close, and mount so nothing girdles a limb.
Less so than a live oak or a pecan. The crown is more open and the limbs are crooked, so there is less structure to cast a dense shadow. That same character makes it excellent to uplight for its branch form. If your property also has pecan or bur oak, those are usually where the downlights go.
Yes. Runs of two to four hundred feet lose real voltage, and the symptom on an LED system is flicker or a fixture that will not strike rather than a gentle dimming. Cable gauge is chosen for the run, the layout uses hubs rather than one long chain, and the transformer goes where the load is, with capacity left spare.
Yes, and it is a different job from the front of a house. A courtyard is somewhere people sit, so the levels come down, the fixtures go where nobody looks straight into them, and the water is left to reflect what is lit around it rather than being lit across. Wet paving sets the rest: fixtures off the walking line and junctions clear of the splash.
The approach travels; the plan does not. What carries over is the method — wash the elevation rather than spotlighting it, let one good tree do the heavy lifting, and keep the fixtures out of sight. What changes is your trees, your elevation and where you actually sit outside, which is what the design visit is for. Todd walks it in daylight.
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.