In the past, exterior lighting was all about functional lighting. Lights outside the home didn’t extend far beyond some spotlights setup on the eves of your home to splash light on your lawn, wall lights outside your door, and maybe a few path lights strewn in. However, with contemporary exterior lighting, the lights outside your home take on a much more important role. The lights are placed to become a part of your property and make it more visually appealing. And with so many light fixtures available today, there is almost no limit to the different options you have when installing garden lights.
There is no one set type of contemporary exterior light fixture that people use to achieve the contemporary style. Instead of being about the shapes and style of the fixtures the contemporary style is about how the fixtures fit in with and complement nature. Contemporary exterior lights complement the darkness and the plants that are already in your garden. The lights are there to draw attention to the plants, not to themselves, and give a sense of space to what otherwise might be an endless stretch of black.
To achieve this look, you need to follow two principles. First, recognize that less light will many times produce greater and more appealing visual effects than more light will. Remember the lights you are installing are accent lights, not huge floodlights. Second, always try to hide the light fixtures. If you’re trying to draw attention to the plants and the shadows in your yard, you don’t want huge lights cluttering it up and possibly blinding anyone who walks by. This means staying away from tacky lights shaped like frogs, lawn jockeys, and other objects.
Finally, if you really want to create contemporary exterior lighting, you need to install a low voltage garden lighting system. Even with all the advances in solar garden lights in recent years their use is still limited many times. You can’t place them in the shade and the fixtures have to be a certain size to accommodate the solar panels. When you’re trying to blend your lights in with your plants this can be a huge pain.
Low voltage lights, on the other hand, consume very little electricity to begin with because they’re on a 12 volt, not 120 volt circuit. You also have a huge array of options to choose from when picking out your lights and will only be limited by your imagination.
If you want to give your house the best look possible at night, you can’t beat contemporary landscape lighting. In this type of landscape lighting, the lights are designed and placed to blend in with nature and accentuate the natural beauty already in your property instead of drawing attention to themselves. Try looking around on ours site for a few more tips on designing your garden lights or start looking at some of the many stores online that stock the parts you need to start getting your creative juices flowing.
