Landscape Lighting Design Tips
Professional Outdoor Lighting
Why have a nice yard or outdoor area only enjoyed during daylight hours?
There are many good reasons to light up your landscape. You may want to have clear, safe walkways and places to sit. You might wish to keep the soccer game going after dusk. Or you may simply want to enjoy how it looks when you arrive home after a long day.
Whatever your reasons, here are some things to consider when lighting your outdoor area.
What Areas Should You Light?
A lot comes down to your aesthetic and whether you are factoring safety features into your lighting plan. Some of the most common areas to light are:
- Pathways
- Patios
- Benches
- Trees or shrubbery
- Water features
- Architectural elements
- Driveways
Also, when choosing which areas to light, consider how they’d look from the inside and the outside.
Special Lighting Effects
When highlighting specific areas in your landscape, most tricks involve direction and shadow. Lighting coming from above looks significantly different from light coming from below or the side. The three most popular strategies for lighting outdoor areas are downlighting, uplighting, and cross-lighting.
Downlighting
Aim lights downward, usually from a tree, to create a diffuse, gentle, but broad lighting effect. The resulting effect can be similar to moonlight, which adds a sense of romance to the area. This is a good choice for pathways, outdoor benches, and patios.
Uplighting
Looking for something more striking? Go in the opposite direction by aiming lights upwards into a tree or onto a house or other structure. Doing this can make features dramatically stand out more by using bold shadows and high contrast. This will help emphasize your chosen focus against the background landscape.
Crosslighting
Want to bring bold attention to a feature without using shadows? Crosslighting may be the trick you’re looking for. By lighting your focal point from both sides, you can eliminate shadows.
Using Your Landscape Features
By incorporating your landscape features in your decision-making, you can get a lot out of light and shadow. For instance, downlighting through a canopy of pine or maple can result in a pleasing lacy shadow effect. Uplighting can bring the appearance of certain features forward while pushing others back, allowing for a greater sense of depth.
Ambient vs. Spotlighting
Keep in mind that ambient lighting is most often used to create an atmosphere by gently lighting an area while spotlighting focuses attention on a particular feature. There’s no reason why you can’t use both. Play around a bit. The effects you create with light and shadow rely heavily on what you’re working with regarding landscape and architecture.
Lighting a Pathway
Setting lights along a path is a popular way to ensure that people can walk safely, in addition to looking nice.
Consider placing lights on a path about five or six feet apart to start with. If you already have some ambient light coming in from another source, you can expand these distances to around eight feet. If you’re looking to create a more vivid look for your pathway, bring them closer together.
The Experts at Vision Green
Vision Green will help you with further questions about lighting your outdoor areas.
Give us a call today at 704.910.1941, so you can get your outdoor lighting project underway.
