Indoor, Outdoor, Landscape & Recessed Lighting in Land O' Lakes, FL

Lighting Is the Upgrade You Notice Every Single Day

Of all the improvements a homeowner can make, lighting delivers the most change per dollar. A kitchen with a single dated flush-mount fixture and a dark island becomes a different room with six well-placed recessed lights, three pendants and under-cabinet strips on dimmers. A front yard that disappears at dusk becomes a welcoming entry with path lights and uplights on the palms. A lanai that nobody uses after dark becomes the best room in the house. Lightning Bay Electric designs and installs interior, exterior and landscape lighting for homes across Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Manatee counties.

We are a family owned and operated electrical contractor, licensed by the Florida DBPR under EC13013571, and lighting is some of our favorite work because it is visible and the homeowner gets to enjoy it immediately. The kitchen remodel lighting in our gallery, the pendants and recessed cans in Riverview and the globe pendants with under-cabinet lighting in a white Tampa kitchen, are real projects we completed. We also handle the commercial side, including the restaurant and venue accent lighting in Tampa shown on our commercial page.

Recessed Lighting Done Right

Recessed lighting is the backbone of modern interior lighting, and the details matter more than people expect. Spacing is the first one: a general rule is to divide the ceiling height by two to get the spacing between lights, so an 8 foot ceiling wants lights about 4 feet apart, and lights should sit 2 to 3 feet off the walls to avoid scalloping. Too few lights leaves dark pockets; too many looks like an airport runway. The second detail is the fixture itself. We install slim, canless LED wafer lights that fit between trusses and in shallow ceilings, and IC-rated housings where there is insulation contact, which is almost everywhere in a Florida attic.

Color temperature is the detail that makes or breaks the look. For living spaces and kitchens with warm wood tones we recommend 2700K to 3000K; for white kitchens and bathrooms 3000K to 3500K reads clean and bright without feeling clinical. Whatever you choose, keep it consistent across a room and adjoining rooms. Selectable-temperature fixtures let us dial this in on site. We put every group of lights on a quality LED-compatible dimmer, because the ability to take a kitchen from bright work light to soft dinner light is what makes the room feel finished. For remodels we coordinate with your cabinet and drywall trades; see our remodel electrical page for how that sequencing works.

Kitchen Pendants, Under-Cabinet and Accent Lighting

A kitchen needs three layers of light. Recessed lights provide general illumination. Pendants over the island or peninsula provide task light where you chop and style where you gather; we hang them 30 to 36 inches above the counter and center them on the island, not the room, which requires relocating the box more often than not. Under-cabinet LED strips are the layer most kitchens are missing, and they are the one that makes counters usable by eliminating the shadow your own body casts from overhead lights. We install hardwired low-profile strips with a dedicated dimmer, hidden behind the cabinet light rail, so there are no visible pucks or cords.

Accent lighting, toe-kick lighting, in-cabinet lighting for glass doors and LED tape in coves or above cabinets round out a kitchen or a great room. Smart dimmers and scene controls tie it together so one button sets the whole space; our smart home page covers the options.

Exterior, Security and Landscape Lighting Built for Florida

Outdoor lighting in Tampa Bay has to survive brutal sun, daily summer downpours, and, anywhere near the coast, salt air that turns cheap fixtures to powder in a couple of years. We install wet-rated soffit lights, sealed LED floods and motion security lights on proper weatherproof boxes with in-use covers, and we run exterior circuits with GFCI protection as code requires. For Apollo Beach, Ruskin, St. Pete, Clearwater, Dunedin and Bradenton homes we specify marine-grade brass, copper or stainless fixtures that develop a patina instead of corroding.

Low-voltage landscape lighting is the most transformative exterior upgrade. A transformer on a GFCI outlet feeds buried 12 gauge cable to path lights along walkways, uplights on palms, oaks and architectural features, wall washes on the front elevation, and downlights in trees for a moonlight effect. Everything runs on a photocell or astronomical timer so it turns on at dusk and off on schedule with no babysitting. Because the system is low voltage and the cable is shallow, it goes in with very little disruption to beds and sod. Pool cage and lanai lighting, dock lighting and waterfront lighting follow the same wet-location rules.