Integrated Outdoor Lighting and Audio Transform a Duck Key Waterfront Home into a Coastal Retreat

Integrated outdoor lighting and audio can fundamentally shape how a waterfront home is experienced, and that’s something a newly built residence on Duck Key in the Florida Keys brings to life. The property has been designed to unify architecture, landscape and outdoor living, extending from the pool deck and outdoor kitchen to the dock and waterfront edge. D’Asign Source, designers and builders of the home, led the landscape design and integrated the outdoor technology as part of the overall project. They specified Coastal Source solutions engineered to Defy the Elements™, providing illumination, distributed sound and durability suited to coastal conditions.

Set on a 10,350-square-foot waterfront property, the residence extends everyday living across a series of connected outdoor spaces. The rear of the home centers on the pool deck, outdoor kitchen and seating areas overlooking the water, while steps lead down to a turf area and seawall that connects the property to the dock. Lighting and audio were planned to support how the homeowners actually use the space, enhancing atmosphere and usability without overwhelming the area.

The landscape design intentionally layers palms, planting beds and hardscape elements to create depth across the waterfront, providing multiple surfaces and textures for light to interact with after dark. This landscape-led approach allows the lighting to highlight architecture, planting and circulation in a way that feels natural rather than overly illuminated.

Ease of use and continuity across the property were essential. The house incorporates a Sonos-based music system throughout the interior and exterior, allowing audio to move smoothly from inside the home to the outdoor living areas, where Coastal Source loudspeakers extend the experience without interruption. Large sliding glass openings blur the boundaries even further, allowing the lighting and audio systems to function as a continuation of the indoors rather than separate outdoor amenities.

“I use the word seamless,” said homeowner Matt Eberhart. “It’s a seamless experience across the whole house. We can be inside listening to music and move outside without interruption. Everything is controlled from the phone, making it incredibly easy to use. The sound quality outside is clear and powerful, and it really enhances the experience whether we’re relaxing by the pool or entertaining.”

That experience centers on two outdoor audio zones at the rear of the property. D’Asign Source specified two Coastal Source Razor RZ220 loudspeakers mounted above the pool deck, together with an RZ320 soundbar installed beneath the television in the outdoor kitchen area. The system supports music across the pool and patio, as well as movies and sports from the seating areas and hot tub.

“It’s not only when we’re in the pool,” Eberhart said. “Whether we’re washing the boat or coming back from fishing, we can still use the system – it carries across the property really well. My son and his friends treat it like their own outdoor party space, and the sound quality and ease of control make it a big part of the experience.”

While the Coastal Source audio system plays an important role in how the property is used, the broader project is defined by lighting. According to Nicholas D’Ascanio, project executive and landscape architect at D’Asign Source, the lighting installation required more extensive infrastructure across the site, even though both systems were developed together as part of the overall design.

“The workload was heavier on the lighting because it covers the whole property,” D’Ascanio explained. “The audio is focused around the pool and outdoor living areas, but both play important roles – lighting defines the property at night, while audio brings the spaces to life.”

As with many D’Asign Source projects, the design began with the architecture and site plan, with the landscape developed alongside it. Lighting and audio were layered in as the project evolved, with infrastructure prepared early by running conduits from the low-voltage panel through the crawl space and into the landscape.

“That crawl space under the house makes a big difference for these kinds of systems,” D’Ascanio said. “We bring conduits from the panel in the house out to the landscape so we can run wiring wherever we need it. That gives us flexibility as the project evolves and allows us to add or adjust things later without disturbing finished areas.”

That flexibility proved valuable as the homeowners began spending more time at the property, revealing opportunities to refine lighting in key areas with a few additional fixtures.

“Once people start using the space, they often realize there are one or two areas where a little more light would make a difference,” D’Ascanio said. “Because the system infrastructure is already in place, it’s very straightforward to add another fixture and connect it into the existing run.” Across the property, Coastal Source lighting fixtures were used to support both visual impact and practical movement around the site. The installation includes uplighting for palms and architectural elements, marker lights integrated into planter walls, path lighting for circulation areas and LED tiki torches along the seawall – all specified in Vintage Brass to complement the surrounding architecture and landscape materials.

At the front of the property, lighting is intentionally restrained. A specimen palm near the road acts as a focal point, while reflected light across a textured rock wall adds depth without drawing attention to the fixtures themselves. “We uplight a few of the palms so the light reflects across the rock wall and kind of peeks in and out,” D’Ascanio said. “It’s a subtle effect that adds a lot of character to the front of the property. The idea isn’t to flood everything with light but to create depth and interest while keeping the overall look very natural.”

In the Florida Keys, durability is as equally important as aesthetics. Exposed to salt air, humidity and intense sun, the Duck Key property requires systems built specifically for coastal conditions. Coastal Source fixtures and Plug+Play™ cabling are designed to deliver that reliable, long-term performance while minimizing the risk of corrosion or failure.

“Being right there on the ocean, you naturally think about corrosion and how long things will last,” Eberhart said. “We talked about that a lot during the project, and the expectation was that these products could handle those conditions and perform over time, which gave us confidence. When you’re investing in a home like this, you want equipment that will hold up.”

As with many highly customized residential projects, the lighting system underwent a brief period of fine-tuning after the homeowners moved in. Minor adjustments were made to optimize one of the lighting zones, ensuring the system performed exactly as intended. “Projects like this naturally involve some fine-tuning,” Eberhart said. “The D’Asign Source team stayed with it until everything was dialed in perfectly. That was a real positive – it showed a clear commitment to getting everything exactly right.”

The collaboration between homeowner and project team was made even more notable by the fact that much of the project was managed remotely. During construction, the homeowners were still residing in Connecticut, where they stayed closely involved through regular check-ins and virtual walkthroughs throughout construction.

“We handled most of it from a distance,” Eberhart said. “We scheduled meetings, walked through things online and talked through decisions. The team was always available and easy to work with, and the process went very smoothly despite being remote. By the time we moved down full time, everything was up and running.”

For homeowner Matt Eberhart, the finished property represents the culmination of a long-held vision. “For us, it’s been a 17-year journey,” Eberhart said. “We first came to the Keys when our youngest son was very small and fell in love with the area. Over time we bought the lot, designed the house and eventually built what we think of as our forever home.”

Today, the Duck Key residence demonstrates what’s possible when outdoor lighting and audio are fully integrated into the design of a waterfront home. Through early infrastructure planning and the use of products engineered for coastal conditions, D’Asign Source and Coastal Source have created an outdoor environment that is cohesive, flexible and fully connected to the way the home is lived in.