Guide
2700K vs 3000K: Choosing a Color Temperature for Landscape Lighting
Color temperature is the single most visible choice in a lighting design, and the one most often gotten wrong. The number on the box — 2700K, 3000K, 4000K — decides whether your home looks warm and expensive at night or like a parking lot.
What the numbers look like
Lower numbers are warmer. 2700K is the color of a traditional incandescent bulb — a soft, candle-like warm white. 3000K is a touch crisper, still warm but with slightly more white in it. By 4000K you are in cool, bluish territory that flattens stucco, stone and planting.
- 2700K: warm, residential, flattering to stone, stucco and skin tones
- 3000K: slightly crisper warm white, good on modern architecture
- 4000K and up: cool and commercial — rarely right for a home
Why one temperature across the whole property
Mixed color temperatures are the tell of an amateur system — a warm path light next to a bluish uplight makes both look wrong. We specify one warm temperature across every fixture on the property so the eye reads a single, calm composition.
Our default, and when we deviate
Our default is 2700K across the property. On very modern architecture with cool-toned materials — grey stone, black steel, white plaster — 3000K can read cleaner. What we never do is mix the two on one elevation.
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