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Have you considered outfitting your outdoor space - front yard, pool area, back yard - with lighting, audio, and video, but you don’t want to interrupt the beauty of what your landscaping partners can accomplish? At Gramophone, we can help create an outdoor space that is as enjoyable as it is lovely and eye-appealing.   

We recently posted a two-part video of a beautiful installation at a consumer’s home. This couple has a good-sized family of adult children and loves celebrating life outdoors when the weather turns nice. They knew they wanted to beautify their outdoor space. As they have a substantial yard, which backs up to a wooded area, contacting a local landscape partner made a lot of sense to help with such a large project.  

McHale Landscape Design in Annapolis was that partner.  A landscape specialty brand founded in 1981, McHale Landscape Design is a detail-oriented, full-service design-build firm, serving clients in the mid-Atlantic territory - they have created over 400 award-winning landscapes over the past four decades.  

The homeowners decided to prioritize having fun outdoors, with great music or enjoying movies and ballgames on TV. McHale reached out to Gramophone and Daniel Carr, as Daniel and McHale have worked together previously, and trust was established. A seamless partnership between the landscaping and technology provider is critical, and the only way to ensure that the client’s goals will be met. If lighting, audio, and video don’t integrate well with the landscaping, technology can stick out like a sore thumb. 

So Daniel and Hans Bleinberger, Senior Landscape designer, at McHale, got to work. Daniel suggested Coastal Source Outdoor Audio and Lighting for this project. Coastal Source products are “Engineered to Perform, Designed to Impress”. They build outdoor lighting and audio products with the specific intention that they be used together, as an integrated system that can easily blend with the landscaping.  

Coastal Source’s desire for rugged, long-lasting, and discretely hidden outdoor products comes from a history of frustration with installing other vendor’s “just ok” brands. Located in South Florida, Coastal had previously been installing generally available brands of outdoor lighting and speaker products for their customers - which inevitably would fail in South Florida’s harsh environment of wind-borne salt, sand, and punishing UV rays from the bright Florida sun.  

Frustrated by discussions with unhappy homeowners whose outdoor systems did not provide years of ownership, Coastal Source decided to manufacture their own outdoor products. They set out to design, engineer, and build durable lighting and sound that would truly last.  One example of their current approach: they build lighting fixtures using solid cast brass, for decades of enjoyment.

Another example is the famed Coastal Connector. The easiest way for outdoor lighting and sound systems to fail? A poor wiring connection either becomes disconnected, or rusts and falls apart, or is cut through by a contractor. Coastal has developed a rugged, powerful waterproof connector so that your lighting cables installed easily. You can be confident that with the Coastal system, your lighting and sound stay secure for years. 

Because Coastal Source takes a systematic approach to outdoor entertainment, their audio and lighting products work together seamlessly. Outdoor lighting is popular for many reasons. Safety and security go hand in hand with well-lit areas, especially at the back of the home. Why come home to a darkened house, when there is no reason to? The visual appeal of a well-designed lighting system is another big benefit, as it can make a home look absolutely beautiful at night. You can see some examples by clicking HERE.

Video is another key element in outdoor entertainment. Standard indoor TVs are not engineered to withstand the heat, rain, snow, and cold encountered outdoors. Neither are they designed from a brightness standpoint to compete with the sun’s rays. Modern outdoor TVs however offer both great picture quality and excellent weather resistance. Gramophone offers several outdoor TVs in several size ranges.  

Daniel set to work designing a system to satisfy the need for great sound, video, and lighting. He then worked hand in hand with Hans at McHale, and the homeowner, to make sure the system was integrated with the landscape design. The result is the excellent outdoor system you can see in these videos: 

➡️ Creating a Dream Backyard: Quality Lighting/Audio/Video

➡️ Creating a Dream Outdoor Space | Landscaping, Lighting, Sound

Are you interested in getting the most fun and enjoyment possible from your outdoor system this year? Would you like to have a lighting system that means you’ll never return to a darkened home again? Please reach out to us, either by calling one of our store locations, or filling out this simple contact form.

Thank you for reading this blog post and let us know what you think!