Garden lighting is one of the most popular ways to enhance the beauty and elegance of your home and yard — creating the perfect night-time curb appeal is one of the best, and easiest ways to set your home apart from the rest. Types of garden lights come in a myriad of styles, but choosing the ones that you like the most is only half the battle. Before even considering what lights to purchase, it is most important to first consider what effect(s) you wish to achieve, and what lights will work best to create the ambiance you hope to bring to your home and property. Today’s vast array of solar garden lights add even more creative flexibility to your lighting projects — they can be placed virtually anywhere, and moved at any time. Solar lights are definitely the most versatile means of achieving the outside lighting effects you’ll require to create the most captivating and awe-inspiring impact. To determine what lights you’ll need, start by considering the lighting effects that will best suit your home and garden.
Accent Lighting
First, think about anything that you’d like to showcase in your yard. Plants and flowers are a great place to start when creating an outdoor garden lighting scheme. What do you enjoy looking at the most during the day, and what features in your yard tend to attract others’ attention? These are the items you’d probably want to accent in the evening hours. For these items, begin by finding accent lights that will softly shine light directly on the plant or feature that you’d like to showcase in the evening.
Directional Lighting
Adding drama to outdoor features is a great way to even further enhance them. Although you may have items that you’d like to “accent,” you may have other objects that you’d like to have stand out even more. By placing a light directly below your feature, you’ll dramatically enhance the look of it when using this up-lighting technique. Lighting objects from the ground up creates a completely different effect than simply casting a general accent light on the subject. Conversely, down-lighting is exactly the opposite of this, but creates an entirely different effect yet again. The effect of downward-directed-lighting is a great enhancement that will place any object on centre stage, and once again set it apart from other up-lit, or accent-lit items; moreover, down-lighting is also a great way to simply add general lighting to any area. Spot lights are a great style of solar light to achieve this lighting technique.
Backlighting
If you’ve ever been for a portrait sitting at a photographer’s studio, you may have noticed that there is usually a “backlight” to cast a nice glow around your head and shoulders – backlights provide a good visual separation between the subject and the background. This principle, when applied to your garden lighting, creates a beautiful appeal, and it definitely lends to a very manicured look. Implementing backlighting is a fantastic way to add another layer of light. Layering light adds dimension and drama, and this is an ideal instance where the versatility and mobility of solar lights will reap a lot of benefit.
Highlighting
Texture is an essential element in design. Skimming light at an almost parallel angle to the textured surface of your object, let’s say a nice retaining wall that contains a portion of your garden, can be just enough to add a contrasting texture when admiring the softness of the foliage it contains. Adding these highlights to strong texture creates deep shadows augmenting the visual appeal of of the light-skimmed surface. If you chose to light the wall behind your garden this way, you’d also be creating a silhouette-like effect for any object in front of the lit wall. This technique can be used as another light-layering option.
If you’re planning to use any “traditional”, wired garden lights, be sure to carefully plan where they will go — their placement will be permanent, so moving them when night falls will definitely be an issue. The absolute best way to implement any outside lighting scheme is to use solar lights … their versatility and portability as outside lights make them the easiest, most productive choice. Not only will their use allow you to create your lighting display in the evening when you can see the effects, but their light will be free of charge. Solar garden lights aren’t what they used to be — they are now more powerful, charge better in low-sun areas, and are brighter for much longer. Using the advice presented here, it is now well within your reach to create beautifully lit landscape better even than the Jones’s!
