What to Consider When Planning Your Landscape Lighting Design
Check Out Some Key Tips from Our Landscape Lighting Experts
Landscape lighting does much more than illuminate our Centerville, OH properties after sunset. It adds ambiance to our exterior living spaces and extends our outdoor activities into the evening. It makes our homes feel more friendly and familiar while increasing our sense of safety and security.
Landscape lighting designs look different from curb to curb, which can make planning one from scratch a bit tricky. Which areas should you illuminate? Which lighting techniques are best? Which lighting fixtures should you choose? Let our lighting experts help. We dive into these considerations below.
SEE ALSO: 2 Critical Components of a Smart Lighting System
Exterior Areas You Want to Illuminate
The areas or objects you illuminate will depend on your landscape lighting goals. Do you want to brighten your property to improve security at night, or do you want to beautify a drab exterior? Maybe you want to add lights to your patio orswimming pool so you can better enjoy the backyard after dark.
Common areas to illuminate for improved security are entryways, exterior walls where windows are easily accessible, the driveway, pathways, and the garage. For added beauty, consider illuminating trees and shrubs, flower beds, water fountains, ponds, and textured architecture.
Lighting Techniques for Your Landscape
Lighting techniques abound for landscapes to create a perfectly customized aesthetic for any unique home. We’ll list a few popular techniques below (though there are many more than these).
Spotlighting: Spotlighting creates an intense beam of light to illuminate focal points for items like shrubs, flower beds, and statuary.
Diffusing: Diffused lighting spreads light over a large area and is less bright than spotlighting. Consider softly diffused lighting for larger shrubbery and gardens or any wanted ground cover.
Moonlighting: This lighting effect mimics the look of real moonlight by positioning soft lighting to shoot downwards from high up, such as in tall trees.
Uplighting: This dramatic shadowing effect is accomplished by placing lights low to the ground, or burying them in the ground, and directing the light source upwards into treesor uponstatues and walls.
Downlighting: Similar to moonlighting, downlighting involves mounting lights from a higher location to flood light downwards over wide areas for increased safety or to better entertain after dark.
Types of Lighting Fixtures
Naturally, you’ll need certain lighting fixtures to achieve the types of lighting designs listed above. You have plenty of options, so it’s best to work with an expert when picking the fixtures for your landscape. We’ll discuss a few common lighting fixtures here to get your creative juices flowing.
For lit pathways and steps, you may consider standing fixtures like bollard and post lights that add a unique flair to your landscape. If you want to conceal your light source altogether, you’ll like well lights, which install flush with the ground and are best for uplighting. Wet niche lights install beautifully in the sides of your pool or at the bottom of your fountains. Lip lights work well under steps and railings.
Options for Light Control
Lastly, how do you want to control your lights? Unlike our indoor lights, outdoor lights aren’t used all day; we only turn them on at sunset and into the night. Automated timers are ideal for exterior lights so that you can rest confidently knowing they’ll power on at a certain time each evening and power off in the morning. You can also use sensors to trigger lights when motion is detected on your property.
If you have a home automation system like Control4, our team can connect your landscape lighting system to your Control4 system so you can enjoy remote operation of your lights or integrate them into existing smart home scenes. You can even use voice control to turn them on and off at will. Lighting control options are virtually endless when paired with smart home automation.
Plan your landscape lighting project the right way by working with a professional like Beacon Audio Video Systems. We’ll sweat the details for you so that you don’t have to. To schedule a free consultation, contact us here or send us a message using the chat box below.
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