One of the necessary finishing touches to any well maintained property is the use of outdoor landscape lighting fixtures. Landscape lighting increases the visual appeal of your house and the functionality of much of your land and it brings your property value along for the ride as well. Designing lights that will take both you and your neighbor’s breath away on a nightly basis is not hard. You just need the proper planning and installation to get it done right.
Decide On Your Outdoor Landscape Lighting Theme and Fixtures
When it’s viewed at night without any lights, your landscape is almost like a blank canvas that you can draw anything on. The first thing you must figure out is what type of mood you would like to set with your outdoor landscape lighting. To do this, take a walk around your property and night and try to figure out what you could be doing after dark and what you would like you and other people around to feel like while they’re doing it. Maybe you want your deck to have an island theme for when you have cookouts or maybe you want to give some of the trees a spooky, almost surreal feel with long shadows. Let your imagination run wild with the possibilities.
While you’re doing this avoid the mistake many homeowners make and try to only choose one theme to light your house in. One theme will give everything a consistent feel that can be built on, but if you try to mash together too many themes in a tiny area, you will end up with no theme at all and just a lot of tacky lights. Pick something and stay with it. If you want to go to a different style, you can always change lights out later.
After you’ve decided what general theme you want to employ, its time to decide on the different outdoor landscape lights and lighting methods you would like to employ. Start first with how you would like to light the paths on your property; these can range from driveways to actual walking paths through your garden. These are the easiest lights to decide on and so should give you a great starting point. After you’ve decided on your path lighting style, try to decide how you would like the entrances to your house lit. After the entrances, move to deciding the lighting style for the large objects in your landscape, such as large trees, shrubs, pools, and facades. Finally, figure out the accent lighting for smaller areas and objects on your property. Start with the easiest and largest things to light and work your way down.
While you are doing this, it might help to either sketch out a picture of your landscape and draw in the lights, or if you’re really talented, take a picture use a computer program such as Photoshop to do much the same thing. This will help you get a better overall picture of how your landscape will end up looking once the lights are installed.
Things to Keep In Mind While Designing the Lights
While you’re trying to sketch out the lights you would like to use on your property, try to have a specific task in for each bulb you are trying to place. Are you place lights here for security or are they just to make sure people aren’t tripping over the stairs? Different tasks will need different bulbs and different features to accomplish what you hope them to.
If you are aiming for accent lighting your garden while placing your outdoor landscape lights, try to create some dramatic touches if possible. Do this by playing with the different shadows that object throw off. Try moving lights around and placing them at different heights to give you different looks.
Finally, one other very important thing to keep in mind when planning your landscape lighting scheme is how far away your lights will ultimately be from the transformer if you are planning on using low voltage landscape lighting. You transformer will turn the normal 120 volt current electricity into 12 to 22 volt power that will not shock people out in your lawn. However, the downside to this that the further away from the transformer you run power cords, the dimmer your lights will be. This needs to be taken into consideration as well.
By using these design tips and other creative landscape lighting ideas, you will be well on your way to creating the outdoor landscape lighting that will be the envy of the entire neighborhood. Just make sure to do your research and start planning today!
