A mid-century suburb whose signature house is the hardest ordinary house in the Metroplex to light well.
Richardson was a depot on the Houston and Texas Central in 1873 and a town of its own from 1925, but the city you drive through now was built mostly between the arrival of Collins Radio in 1951 and the telecom boom along US 75 that gave the corridor its name in the 1980s. That timing produced a very particular housing stock: single-storey ranch houses, long in plan, low in the roof, with deep overhanging eaves and a lot of horizontal emphasis.
People assume a simple house is a simple house to light. It is the opposite. A tall gabled elevation gives a lighting designer surfaces, angles and places to hide; a sixty-foot ranch frontage with a four-foot eave gives you one long low wall, most of which is in permanent shadow from its own roof. Getting it right is a specific skill and it is most of what we do here.
Here is the problem in one picture. Put a conventional uplight in the bed against a ranch house wall and aim it up the elevation. The beam travels about seven feet, reaches the underside of a four-foot eave overhang, and stops. You have lit the soffit. The wall above it — which is where the roofline, the fascia and the whole character of the house are — receives nothing, and from the street the house reads as a bright strip at ground level under a black band.
Three things work instead, usually together.
Mid-century houses also carry details worth finding: a brick screen wall, a projecting carport beam, a clerestory band. Those are the moments on the elevation and they repay a tight beam each.
Richardson is in the middle of a long handover. Houses built for their first owners in the 1960s are being bought and reworked — opened up at the back, re-roofed, re-landscaped — and a good share of our enquiries here come from people halfway through that.
If you are one of them, the sequencing is worth knowing, because a renovation opens windows that close again. While the back garden is a building site and the beds are out, cable can be run across open ground in an afternoon instead of being threaded through finished planting. While a terrace or path is being relaid, a sleeve underneath it costs the price of the pipe. If the soffit or fascia is being replaced, that is the moment to get the feed in for eave downlights, because afterwards it means lifting new boards.
None of that requires you to have decided on a scheme. It is groundwork that keeps options open, and it is the difference between a straightforward installation later and an awkward one. If the house already has a system from a previous owner, we will tell you honestly which parts are worth keeping — repair and maintenance covers taking over somebody else's work.
Richardson is not only houses. The corridor either side of US 75 is offices, business parks and multi-tenant sites, and a meaningful share of our Richardson work is commercial rather than residential. It is a different discipline from garden lighting and it is worth saying what it involves.
Commercial site lighting is driven by three things that do not apply at a house: uniformity across a surface rather than effect, the ability to be maintained without closing the site, and running costs on a meter somebody is watching. Car parks, service yards, building approaches and signage all want pole or wall-mounted fixtures laid out on a spacing that leaves no dark pockets between them, which is an arithmetic exercise as much as a design one.
The LED conversion case is also much stronger on a commercial site than a domestic one, simply because the hours are longer and the fixture count is higher. We handle that work under pole, site and hardscape lighting and LED conversion and retrofit, and TC Lighting's Texas Electrical Contractor Licence, TECL 41495, covers the electrical side of it as well as the fittings.
We have not photographed a Richardson 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 Richardson and want your property to be the first photograph on this page, the design visit is free.
Two of the thirty-one letters on the reviews page were written by Richardson clients, printed word for word as they were sent to Todd Cormier. The other below is from a nearby town, marked with where it came from.
“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…”
“We worked with Todd and the TC Lighting team on a recent new build lighting project. What a great experience! Todd and his team are passionate about lighting and providing a truly unique and awe inspiring final product, and they delivered! We have already received so many positive comments from our friends and neighbors…”
“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…”
Dallas and Collin counties, either side of US 75, about fourteen miles east of Carrollton. Free on-site design visit, and Todd comes out himself.
Richardson, 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 Richardson 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.
Nothing is broken -- the geometry is simply wrong for uplighting. The beam reaches the underside of the eave and stops, so the wall above gets nothing. A ranch frontage wants grazing light running along the wall from the ends, small downlights mounted in or under the eave itself, and the height supplied by uplit specimen trees rather than by the house.
Usually a little, because the fixtures are smaller and the runs shorter, but it is not a simpler design problem. A long low elevation with a deep eave gives you fewer usable angles than a tall gabled one, so the placement takes more thought even though the equipment costs less.
During, not after. While beds are out and the garden is open, cable runs take an afternoon; afterwards they mean lifting finished planting. If a path or terrace is being relaid, a sleeve underneath costs the price of the pipe. If soffits are being replaced, that is the moment to get a feed in for eave downlights.
Yes, and a good share of our Richardson work is commercial. Car parks, service yards, building approaches and signage are laid out for uniformity rather than effect, and the LED conversion case is much stronger there than at a house because the hours and fixture counts are higher. TC Lighting is a licensed Texas electrical contractor, TECL 41495.
Yes -- two of the thirty-one client letters on our reviews page were written by Richardson clients, and they are printed in full, word for word as they were sent to Todd Cormier.
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.