Neither system pays for itself at resale, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. In the 2023 Remodeling Impact Report on outdoor features, produced jointly by the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Landscape Professionals, realtors estimated cost recovery for an irrigation system installation at 83 percent and for outdoor lighting at 59 percent. Both fall short of full recovery. What both do is protect and enable the things that recover far more than their cost, because the same report puts standard lawn care at 217 percent recovery and routine yard maintenance at 104 percent. A brown, patchy lawn is what costs you money at closing. Irrigation is how you avoid one.
This guide covers what the numbers actually say, where lighting earns its return, and why a neglected system reduces value instead of adding it.
Do Irrigation and Outdoor Lighting Actually Raise Home Value
Here is the full picture from that report, with Realtor-estimated cost recovery alongside the typical project costs supplied by contractors.
| Project | Typical cost | Estimated cost recovery |
| Standard lawn care service | $415 |
217% |
|
Routine yard maintenance |
$4,800 | 104% |
| Overall yard upgrade | $9,000 |
100% |
|
Outdoor kitchen |
$15,000 | 100% |
| New patio | $10,500 |
95% |
|
New wood deck |
$16,900 | 89% |
| Tree care | $2,875 |
87% |
|
Irrigation system installation |
$6,000 | 83% |
| Outdoor lighting | $6,800 |
59% |
|
Fire feature |
$9,000 | 56% |
| In-ground pool | $90,000 |
56% |
Read the top and bottom of that table together and the lesson is clear. The cheapest, least glamorous items recover the most. The expensive built features recover the least.
Irrigation at 83 percent sits in respectable company, above a wood deck and just below tree care. Lighting at 59 percent sits near the bottom with pools and fire features. Neither is a financial argument on its own, which is why the honest version of this conversation at Evergreen Contracting & Irrigation starts with what you want from the property rather than with resale.
What Those Cost Recovery Numbers Actually Mean
Before leaning on any of this, understand where it comes from.
These figures are Realtor estimates of what a homeowner would recover, collected by survey. They are not appraisal data and not paired transaction analysis. NAR surveyed its membership and received 2,620 total responses. The cost side came from a separate survey of contractor members, which drew 160 responses.
The costs assume a specific property: roughly a 2,500 square foot house on a 14,000 square foot lot, built after 1978, without hidden problems, using standard rather than premium materials.
Three limits follow:
- They are national, not local. Central Pennsylvania is not Phoenix or coastal Florida, where irrigation carries different weight.
- They are opinions from professionals who see many transactions, which is useful, but it is not the same as measured sale price differences.
- Project cost varies enormously by property. A $6,000 irrigation figure describes a specific lot size. Yours may be nothing like it.
Treat these as directionally reliable and precisely wrong, which is how most remodeling ROI data should be read.
The Reframe That Actually Matters
Put the two ends of the table next to each other and a better argument appears.
Standard lawn care recovers 217 percent. Routine maintenance recovers 104 percent. Those are the two highest returns in the entire report, and both describe keeping a property’s grounds healthy and tidy rather than adding anything to it.
Now ask what keeps a lawn healthy through a Central Pennsylvania August. Consistent water, applied evenly, in a region that has spent much of this summer under drought watch or warning across Dauphin, Cumberland, Lancaster, Lebanon, York, Adams, Perry, and Berks counties.
An irrigation system is not competing with lawn care for your money. It is the infrastructure that makes lawn care produce a result. Spending $415 on lawn service and letting the turf brown out in July returns nothing. The 217 percent figure assumes the lawn actually looks good.
That is the defensible value argument, and it is different from the one usually made. Irrigation does not add value directly. It protects the condition that the highest-returning items depend on, which is the point of ongoing irrigation services rather than a one-time install.
Where Outdoor Lighting Earns Its Return
Lighting has the weakest cost recovery in this category and the strongest everything else.
In the same report, outdoor lighting scored a 10 out of 10 on the Joy Score, the report’s measure of homeowner satisfaction with a completed project. That was the highest score recorded, tied with an in-ground pool costing more than thirteen times as much.
Where lighting actually earns its place:
- Evening showings. Homes in this region get listed in fall and winter, when showings happen after dark. An unlit property photographs and shows poorly at 5 p.m. in November.
- Listing photography. Twilight exterior photos are a standard listing tactic and require a lit property.
- Perceived safety. Lit pathways, steps, and entries read as safe to a buyer walking the property.
- Usable hours. Lighting extends the time a patio or yard is usable, which is the benefit you actually consume while you own the house.
- Architectural emphasis. Uplighting stonework or specimen trees draws attention to features that already exist.
The honest framing is that lighting is a quality-of-life purchase that helps a house present well, rather than an investment. A 59 percent recovery on outdoor lighting design and installation means you are buying enjoyment and paying about 41 percent of the cost for it. For most owners that is a reasonable trade, stated plainly.
What Realtors Recommend Before Listing
The strongest finding in the whole report is not about any single project.
Ninety-two percent of Realtors recommend that sellers improve curb appeal before listing. Among specific recommendations, the largest shares went to routine yard maintenance at 74 percent, standard lawn care at 53 percent, and tree care at 44 percent.
Notice what is not on that list. No major installation appears among the top recommendations. The advice is overwhelmingly to make what exists look cared for.
For a seller, that reorders the priorities. Edging, mulch, pruning, and a lawn that is uniformly green will do more in the ninety days before listing than any new system. If a system is already in the ground, the pre-listing job is making sure it works and the lawn shows it.
A Neglected System Lowers Value Instead of Adding It
This is the part the industry does not advertise, and it is consistent with how buyers behave.
An in-ground system that does not work is not neutral. It is a disclosed defect and a future expense the buyer will price in. Specific ways it costs you:
- Inspection findings. A failed or missing backflow assembly is a compliance issue, and unpermitted plumbing work draws questions.
- No documentation. A system with no plan and no service history reads as an unknown liability rather than a feature.
- Visible failure. Dry rings, a broken head spraying a driveway, or a wet spot in the lawn during a showing all register.
- Deferred winterization. A system that was not blown out and cracked over the winter turns into a repair negotiation.
- Dead lighting fixtures. Corroded or dark fixtures suggest neglect across the property, fairly or not.
If you are within a year of listing, getting an existing system diagnosed and working is a better use of money than adding anything new. That is ordinary irrigation service and repair work, and it converts a liability line into a feature line.
What Appraisers See Versus What Buyers See
These are two different valuations and they behave differently.
An appraiser works from comparable sales and gives limited weight to yard features. Irrigation and lighting rarely appear as line item adjustments. If comparable homes in your area do not have these systems, an appraiser has no basis to credit them much.
A buyer responds to condition and presentation. A well-kept property with a green lawn and a lit walkway feels maintained, and that feeling affects both the offer and how quickly it comes.
The practical consequence is that these systems more often influence how fast a house sells and how competitive the offers are, rather than moving an appraised number. In a market where comparable homes commonly have irrigation, its absence can be a deduction even when its presence is not a premium.
If You Are Selling Soon Versus Staying Long Term
The right answer depends entirely on your timeline.
Selling within two years. Do not install a new system for resale. The recovery figures do not support it and you will not enjoy it long enough to justify the gap. Repair what exists, get the backflow tested, make the lawn uniform, and consider lighting only if evening showings are likely.
Staying five years or more. Now the calculation changes, because you are buying use rather than resale. Five to ten summers of an even lawn, plus roughly 83 percent recovery on the irrigation at the end, is a reasonable outcome. This is when a properly designed irrigation system installation makes sense, and when getting the design right matters most, since you are the one living with it.
Somewhere in between. Prioritize the items with the highest recovery: maintenance, lawn health, tree care. Skip the built features.
Documentation Is Part of the Value
This costs nothing and is routinely skipped.
At resale, a system with records is a feature. A system without them is a question mark. Keep:
- The as-built plan or photographs of trench lines
- Zone maps with head locations
- Controller model and programming notes
- Annual backflow test reports
- Winterization and start-up service records
- Warranty documentation and the installer’s contact information
That last group matters most. Backflow test history and a documented winterization record answer the two questions a cautious buyer will ask about an in-ground system: is it compliant, and was it cared for. Both are produced automatically by keeping the property on scheduled seasonal irrigation services, which means the paperwork accumulates whether you think about it or not.
Final Thoughts
Irrigation and outdoor lighting do not pay for themselves at resale. Realtors put cost recovery at 83 percent for irrigation and 59 percent for lighting in the National Association of Realtors and National Association of Landscape Professionals report. Anyone quoting you a figure above 100 percent for either is not using that data.
What the same report shows is that lawn care and routine maintenance recover 217 percent and 104 percent, the two highest returns in the category, and that 92 percent of Realtors tell sellers to improve curb appeal before listing. Irrigation is the infrastructure those returns depend on in a region that spends much of the summer under drought watch or warning.
Lighting is a different purchase. It carries the highest homeowner satisfaction score in the report and helps a property show well after dark, which matters for fall and winter listings. Buy it for the years you live there, not for closing day.
And if you already have systems in the ground, the highest-return move is making them work and documenting them, not adding more.
If you are weighing what makes sense for your property and your timeline, ask about outdoor lighting and irrigation in Central Pennsylvania and say up front how long you plan to stay. That single piece of information should change the recommendation, and a contractor who does not ask for it is not giving you advice.