How to take your landscape lighting to the next level
Choosing your landscape lighting and right positioning is key to a successful well planned outdoor living space. Lights should be highlighting and brightening, inviting and layering for added depth and interesting ambiences to your outdoor space. Lights are your perfect little helper to guide guest to certain areas like entrances, gathering areas and they can make your place look bigger than it actually is. They set the mood for any event, you just have to know how to use them.
To create the right ambience for your space you need a variety of lights and brightness levels. Some lights are more functional than others so choosing the correct one is your first important step. Let’s go over the details:
Landscape Lights include the following:
Spot lights can uplight on objects, downlight and act as directional lights as well. Spotlights are very versatile fixtures because they are able to support a large variety of bulbs, beam widths and wattages. Spot lights are used to uplight on trees, fountains, statues and other attractions in your landscape. You can get very artsi with those kind of lights by highlighting, silhouetting, shadowing, grazing, moonlighting, spotlighting and flood lighting. Spot lights are easy to hid within your landscape since they are small and stay low to the ground.
Path and Area Lights: Path lights as the name itself reveals is used to light up pathways amongst other things. This kind of lighting fixture lights down. Area lights are down lights as well but they are used to highlight certain areas and they brighten up a bigger space around them. There is lots of esthetic designs available since path lights are more visible in your landscape.
Flood Lights act similar to spot lights but they have a higher wattage and wider angle than spotlights. They are a great addition for added security and to really brighten up your outdoor space. Commonly used in commercial and high traffic outdoor spaces. Most likely you will go with spot lights rather than flood lights if you are looking to lighten up your backyard or side yards adding ambience and warmth.
Well Lights are installed at grade levels, for example in foot traffic areas where people have to pass across the lights. They are also used in turf spaces so that a mower can still access the areas. You can use them on your concrete patio, pathways or anywhere where a spot light might be too visible and a tripping hazard. Since they are flush with the ground they are a beautiful low to the ground illuminating solution.
Step lights are (as you probably figured) mounted to steps, along wall or other areas that can use those fixtures. are made of two main parts – treads are the flat horizontal pieces and risers which are the vertical pieces attached the back of each tread.
Deck Lights are commonly attached to railings around the decks. They can also be mounted to stairs or on sides of other structures like planters etc.
We hope this little introduction will help you on making those final decisions and make sure to visit us again for some new ideas, DIY tips and trick as well as seasonal suggestions for your landscape.