Like any homeowner, your ultimate goal is to make your property comfortable to live, functional, and aesthetically appealing as well. The last one should be easy to achieve as there are so many ways to highlight the beautiful features of your home, plus they’re visually apparent during the daytime. But, now, you realize that such a beautiful façade might simply fade once natural lights would soon disappear for the day, and darkness will loom at night.
Outdoor lighting is incorporated into many modern homes because of the circumstances mentioned above. You’d like your home and landscape to look luxurious even after sunset. By turning on the switches for your outdoor lights, your exteriors will look as majestic as ever. If this is your goal, then read on!
Here are some excellent pointers to note if you want to spotlight your home and its landscape:
1. Think Of Which Outdoor Areas To Light Up
While it might be tempting to light up everything in your outdoors, unfortunately, that would be too costly, not to mention the fact that it’ll just contribute to light pollution. Thus, this tip is crucial to prevent excessive and misdirected use of outdoor lighting: know which outdoor areas to light up. Some areas and certain places need to be illuminated, so assess where these are exactly.
Consider the following locations:
- Entryway
Your entryway should be prioritized if you’re putting up outdoor lights. Everyone in your household will pass through this area to gain access to the home. Place lights in the front door area, and if you have other doors as entryways, place lights on them, too.
- Driveway
If you have a garage or an open parking area, it’s best to invest in driveway lights. They don’t have to be expensive and fancy. You can go for low-voltage lighting, which consumes less energy and won’t contribute to your electric bills a lot.
- Deck Or Patio
If you have a deck or patio, lighting up this area will elevate the entire home’s exterior. You can choose the portions to to illuminate. Using small bulbs or modern lighting fixtures, you can create a beautiful design that will highlight this part of your home.
- Stairway
Primarily for safety purposes, lighting up the stairway will help you see clearly your way to your home.
- Gazebo Or Pergolas
If your outdoor landscape has a gazebo or pergola, it’s another important area to illuminate. It would be great to hold intimate parties and reunions in such areas, and with the lights on, they’ll be perfect for spending a lovely evening with family and friends.
- Other Architectural Features
Look around your home’s exteriors, and you might just be missing out on some areas that need proper lighting. Whether you decide to graze a wall, make your garden look brighter, or install string lights, you can play with the architectural features and light them up. Your landscape will look more first-rate through these simple lighting additions. For your architectural lighting needs, you may check out sites like https://washingtonoutdoorlighting.com/.
2. Decide Ahead On What Fixtures To Go For
Once you determine which areas to light up, it’s now time to ensure which fixtures would best fit them. It’s imperative to size up the site so you can estimate the scale and measurements of the lights you want to buy. Make sure the size and positioning of a fixture are perfect before buying it. You can make a draft and envision the placements of these fixtures first, as this will guide you through your lights-shopping. Consider many features when choosing what brand, type, or model to go for. Furthermore, you should make sure you choose high-quality and weather-resistant lighting fixtures.
Some lighting kits are also available as they’re easier to install and arrange. With a single cord, you can easily install them on your gazebo, garden beds, and other areas. Set them up as dramatic shadows in a garden or build a festive atmosphere around the patio. To go for an eco-friendlier option, go for alternative solar lights.
3. Consider Lighting Even The Hidden Spaces
If you overlook the safety, security, and beauty of landscape lighting, you could miss out on taking full advantage of your outdoor lighting. Before you finish the project, check all corners and spaces thoroughly to see if you’re missing some often-overlooked yet essential areas. You might realize you’ve forgotten to add lights to your garage to make it more fit and functional. Or, perhaps, you’ve bypassed the fact that the outdoor lights on the fences need to be updated and brightened up. These small details should be assessed as well.
4. Get Familiar With Different Uplighting Ideas
Uplighting is another effective method of highlighting more features of your home. The lights usually used in this method create shadows that make your landscape look more captivating. They also add depth to your fences, gates, pavements, and other flat surfaces. Check out the following uplighting methods you can use:
- Shadowing
An angled spotlight projected onto a tall wall behind plants creates dramatic shadows as a backdrop. This gives you the effect of having larger plants because of the shadows being created. Also, they look dramatic and give more splendor to your outdoors.
- Highlighting
With this method, spotlight fixtures are commonly placed at the base of trees, sculptures, and garden structures to illuminate their base and top. This method works well for your garden area.
- Silhouetting
This method is obviously taken from its name, which means it should be creating silhouette effects. Place the spotlights behind the structure, while focusing the lights on the wall to create a silhouette effect. By allowing only the outline of the building to be visible, this will add drama to the outdoor scene.
5. Incorporate Downlights
While uplights offer many merits, downlights boast their own advantages, too. Consider these two methods:
- Accenting
This method is mostly apple on the details of your exteriors. If there are corners and spaces that you want to accentuate, then use accenting as a means of downlighting.
- Moonlighting
Similar to shadowing, moonlighting also projects shadows. However, the spotlights are usually placed in an elevated area so that the shadows that’ll be created can only generate and produce ambient light. For best effects, you must compute the angles and degrees of the spotlight placements.
6. Don’t Overlook The Importance Of Path Lights
Lights along paths should be essential fixtures in every yard. A similar concept to a post light, a path light creates visible light markers along a path. Besides improving curb appeal, path lights make walking on paths safer, making them ideal for any home whose front door has a decent distance from the gate.
When choosing path lights, here are some factors to consider:
- Size
Make sure you take height into account when choosing path lights. They don’t have to be as tall as post lights. A foot tall of path lights should suffice to provide guiding lights.
- Gaps
Your walkways or pathways should have a one-foot buffer around their sides as far as the borders are concerned. It’s crucial to keep in mind the specific distance requirements between one and another. You’d want to avoid overcrowding, yet you wouldn’t want path lights to be too dark.
- Quality
You should choose durable path lights that are made of materials that don’t corrode or wear out. As these will be placed outdoors, they should last a long time, tolerating different external conditions, like weather, dust, and other factors. You can consider using LED path lights since they’re more cost-effective and generate enough light that doesn’t contribute to light pollution. Select the right shade of LED lights that’ll complement your home’s theme.
7. Choose The Right Bulbs And Lights
Landscape lighting is inextricably linked to energy efficiency. It’s not worth it to buy incandescent bulbs as they waste a lot of energy. It’s also important to know the correct wattage for your lights as they’ll impact the light they produce, as well as your bills. You don’t need too many lights outdoors, so ensure that they’re toned well and aren’t too bright.
Vital light wattage may create glares that’ll turn your landscape looking like a circus. A wide range of LED or other smart bulb options is available if you prefer a warmer tone. These are better and wiser alternatives because they’re sustainable, too.
8. Check The Overall Effects From The Inside Of Your Home
Going inside your home and taking a look outside can assist you in choosing the correct lighting fixtures for your yard. That’s a proper position to witness how your patio, deck, garden, and driveway are illuminated, making sure that such areas aren’t overly lit.
Conclusion
Your landscape design is now ready to go out to the field by applying the valuable tips mentioned above. When laying out your landscaping plan, it’s recommended that you work with a professional so they can ensure that all lighting fixture installments and applications are safe and secure. Don’t rush the process to ensure the best outcome.
We have one more surprise for you, where you can try and write a home decor blog or a home improvement blog.
You can start small and gradually add more lights, as needed. But, remember that too much light is as uncomfortable or unusable as too little. Landscape lighting can be done a thousand different ways, but the fun is in creating a unique look that uplifts your home’s aesthetics a hundred times more.
1 thought on “8 Outdoor Lighting Tips To Spotlight Your Home And Landscape”