Planning out a landscape lighting design is like creating a painting. You could choose to go the paint-by-numbers route and install the same boring garden lights that everyone else in your neighborhood has. Or, you could choose to employ some creative landscape lighting ideas and paint your very own masterpiece that will be uniquely yours. This may sound impossible, but it’s actually quite easy with the help of some research on the web and a few design tips you should be on your way to designing your own Sistine Chapel in no time.

1: Use Different Colored Lights to Evoke Different Emotions

One of the easiest ways to get more creative with your landscape lighting is to use different colored bulbs. While most people will stick with the standard white, try using other colors to create a distinct atmosphere. Yellows and reds can create feelings of warmth and passion when used correctly, while you can create a fresh, wintery feel with combinations of blue and white light. Green light meanwhile makes the foliage on tree pop out in the night. This is especially true with pine trees.

Be careful not to overdo this effect as it can leave your yard feeling more like Times Square than a personal garden. However, a few well placed colored light bulbs will greatly add to the atmosphere or any landscape.

2: Don’t Just Light Your Garden

When designing outdoor landscape lighting projects many people focus solely on their gardens, pathways, and on functional lighting for a deck or patio. Make sure you don’t fall into this trap. Landscape lighting should involve your whole landscape, and this includes your house and other architectural features that might be on your property. Make sure that these structures get some feature and ambient lighting as well.

For starters, you could use spot or wall lights to highlight the side of a building. Building facades can also be up lit, and the same is true with archways. Walls and fences around your property also lend themselves to lighting, try focusing a gentle light leading away from your main entertaining area on these features. Just be creative and work with whatever structures are on your property, you can even uplight things such as a small birdbath.

3: Try to Create Dramatic Effects

One of your main goals should be to create several dramatic effects on your landscape using you lights. This is done by playing with varying degrees of light and shadow and different strengths and types of bulbs. This effect is easy to accomplish with trees. For a dramatic effect place a floodlight behind a tree to backlight it. Play with the angle and position of the light until you get it to the exact right spot for your tree. You can also do this in things as mundane as flowerbeds by placing lights in the flower bed at different intervals and heights. This can create an interesting play between shadows and light.

4: Include Water

Water can add another element of creativity to any lighting plan. The surface can form as a reflecting pool that you can cast use as a mirror or setup as a twinkling oasis as it ripples in the night. If you are lucky enough to have the room, a pool works great with lighting systems. If your pool is against the side of a house or building, one interesting effect you can try is to uplight the side of the building that the pool is close to. If you’re standing on the other side of the pool, you then should be able to see a mirror reflection of the wall in the pool. However, for this to work you need to keep your pool spotless so it might be a good idea to hire a pool cleaning service.

Small ponds and fountains are also very versatile when used for lighting purposes. You can place underwater lights in them to show them off at night or shine soft lights across the surface to make the top of the water twinkle when it ripples. Even a small birdbath filled with water will work well as part of a lighting system. The area around the birdbath can be lit up or you can just use it to reflect moon and starlight off of.

If you’re looking to install fountains, one great option is to install solar fountains.  These fountains use solar energy to run so they don’t use any electricity from your home system.  They’re a great pair for your solar garden lighting system and the solar fountains will help make your landscape more eco-friendly.

5: Look Around for Inspiration

If you’re stumped to come up with ideas on your own, perhaps the best thing that you can do is pay a visit to any local botanical gardens you may have in your area. These gardens are professionally designed and should be able to get your gears turning for lighting ideas you can use in your own yard.

Coming up with great landscape lighting ideas is out of your reach. It does require some outside the box thinking to move beyond what you’ve seen in other yards in the past. Think about your own property. What are its greatest strengths you want to show off? Think about this and put some of our tips to work in showcasing your property at night.

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Filed under: Designing and Installing Landscape Lighting

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