A small pocket of Far North Dallas built around a golf course, which is the thing that decides the plan.
Preston Trails is a small neighbourhood in Far North Dallas, built around Preston Trail Golf Club — a Ralph Plummer course that opened in 1965 and held the Byron Nelson Classic from 1968 until 1982. It is part of the City of Dallas rather than a town of its own, and it is genuinely small: a few dozen households rather than a suburb.
What makes it a distinct lighting problem is not the size. It is the boundary. A large share of these gardens open onto the course, and a fairway is not a neighbour, a greenbelt or a creek. It is a maintained, unlit, privately held expanse that people look across — and it changes what you can sensibly do with light at the back of the property.
Light aimed across open mown grass does not stop. There is nothing for it to land on, so it carries, and on a still night a single badly aimed flood at the back of a Preston Trails garden is visible from a long way down the hole. The club keeps the course dark; a garden that throws light onto it is the one thing on the boundary that reads.
So the rear boundary is designed in the opposite direction from the front:
Handled that way a course-side garden is the easiest kind to make look good after dark, because the open ground behind it gives the lit planting a black background to sit against. It is the same borrowed-view logic that makes a lake lot work.
The neighbourhood went in around the club in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, and the planting has had that long to mature. The practical consequence is depth: these are not shallow rear gardens, and the tree cover between the house and the boundary is generally the best material on the property.
A garden with real depth wants to be lit in layers rather than evenly. Something close to the house, something in the middle distance, something at the boundary — and gaps of darkness between them. An evenly lit garden of this depth looks like a car park; the same garden lit in three planes looks twice as long as it is.
Where there is a mature post oak or live oak with height in it, that is where the downlights go. The Preston Hollow page sets out how that mounting works on big North Dallas trees, and the technique is the same here.
A property with a front garden on a quiet street and a rear garden on a golf course is really two lighting jobs with different hours. The front wants to stay lit for arrival and for the look of the street; the back is for the evening and then off.
That is a decision to make at the start rather than later. Separate zones on a transformer with spare channels cost very little on day one; adding them afterwards means a second transformer or re-pulled cable. There is more on how we specify that on the landscape lighting page, and on what tends to fail in older systems on the repair and maintenance page.
Preston Trails is about twenty minutes from us in Carrollton, so a service call is not an expedition. Todd does the design visit himself, in daylight, and it is free.
We have not photographed a Preston Trails installation yet, so every photograph below is from Preston Hollow and Dallas — the nearest documented work, on the same ground and the same kind of property. Each one is captioned with the town it was actually taken in. All are TC Lighting installations, shot after dark on the property. Click any of them to see it full screen.
The full gallery is grouped by town, and the reviews page carries thirty-one client letters in full. If you are in Preston Trails and want your property to be the first photograph on this page, the design visit is free.
Preston Trails is part of Dallas rather than a city of its own, so these are Dallas letters — printed word for word as they were sent to Todd Cormier. All thirty-one are on the reviews page in full.
“We have had landscape lighting on our property for many years and I have always done minor DIY repairs of lighting issues. When I had some recurring problems I could not resolve, I called a landscape lighting supplier I have used for years and was referred to Todd Cormier of TC Lighting…”
“I met Augustine at a QT gas station and I asked him about TC's work. I called Todd and he and Augustine sold me on their project. Now that it's done, my home has the best lights in the area, hands down. I'm very pleased with the workmanship and skill level and highly recommend them.”
“The work and design you did are excellent. The lighting around our yard highlights the exterior of our home and gives a pleasant, subtle ambiance outside to enjoy after dark. We use our backyard and pool much more than before the lights were installed…”
A small pocket of Far North Dallas around the golf club, near the Tollway and Frankford. Free on-site design visit, and Todd comes out himself.
Preston Trails, 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 Preston Trails 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.
No. It is a neighbourhood of Dallas in the far north of the city, built around Preston Trail Golf Club, so City of Dallas rules apply. It is small enough that it is easy to miss on a map, which is why this page exists separately from the Dallas one.
Not if it is designed for the boundary. Light aimed across open mown grass carries a long way because nothing interrupts it, so the rear boundary gets lit inward instead: fixtures at the boundary aiming back at the house and planting, downlights rather than uplights in the boundary trees, and nothing above the fence line pointing out.
An advantage, handled properly. The open dark ground behind the garden gives the lit planting a black background to sit against, which is exactly what makes a scheme read at night. The only real risk is a fixture that aims out instead of in.
Not yet. The photographs here are from Preston Hollow and Dallas, which is the nearest work we have photographed, and they are labelled as such. When a Preston Trails project is shot after dark it will replace them.
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.