Outdoor Decorative Lighting
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Outdoor decorative lighting can make a dramatic improvement to your nightime landscape. It also provides safety and security to your home.
Basically you need to first create a lighting plan (see Planning Outdoor Lighting), decide what areas you want to light, where you want to create highlights, set your budget and then install the outdoor lights.
In most cases, a simple outdoor lighting system where you are using low voltage, or solar outdoor lights is a project that you can complete in a weekend.
Outdoor Lighting Fixtures
There is a huge range of lighting fixtures you can choose from, in a wide range of styles.
Most likely you will choose an overall theme for your outdoor decorative lighting, probably in tune with the style of your home. Then you can choose outdoor lights that fit into that theme.
There are modern lights, ultra-modern, art deco lights, traditional lights and so on.
Outdoor & landscape Lighting Styles:
Accent Lighting
With this style, you use spotlights or minispreads to generate intense light that is focused on a specific object to contrast it against a dark background.
Spread Lighting
This style uses so-called spread fixtures to create circular patterns of light to highlight items such as flowers and low shrubs from above.
Downlighting
With downlighting you usually use spotlights, floodlights and spread light fixtures mounted high up, either on a wall or in a tree and then aimed downwards to create a soft and romantic feeling.
Uplighting
As you would expect, uplighting is the opposite of downlighting and uses fixtures that are surface or ground mounted and angled upward to highlight a feature. This technique uses spotlights, floodlightss, or in-ground light fixtures.
Cross Lighting
With cross lighting, the fixtures - usually spotlights or floodlights - are mounted on the side of a tree, feature wall, or arbor to reveal detail and soften shadows.
Silhouetting
With silhouetting, you normally use spotlights, floodlights, or in-ground light fixtures to light the surface behind an object to create a striking effect.
A variation on silhouetting is “grazing”, where you use a beam of light that just grazes the surface of an object to reveal its texture.
Enjoy!
Landscape Lighting Planning and Design - Part 2
Filed Under Landscape lighting, Planning Outdoor Lighting | Leave a Comment
When you start landscaping a property or installing outdoor lighting, the urge to begin planting or placing outdoor lights immediately is almost overwhelming.
However, whether you are landscaping or installing outdoor lighting for a newly-built home or redesigning an existing landscape, the results will be much more satisfying if you plan first.
The Basic Plan
A landscape and the associated landscape lighting is a picture, with a great opportunity for artistic composition. In home grounds the central feature is the house and to just scatter trees and bushes all over the area surrounding the house defeats the fundamental purpose which is to make good use of every part of the grounds.
So you need a definite plan on paper for the location of the leading features of the landscape and the associated outdoor lighting.
Consider features such as the residence, outdoor areas and patios, any out buildings, walks and drives, the service areas, the border planting, flower-garden, and possibly a vegetable-garden.
To begin, it is recommended you draw a base plan to scale. For most properties a scale of 1/8″=1′ is workable; for small properties or a particular area of a larger development 1/4″=1′ may be better. Graph paper with lines indicating a particular scale is also helpful.
Include all the major features of your property on your drawing. After you have prepared the base plan you can either use tracing paper or transfer the drawing into a suitable PC drawing/graphics program. Then you can sketch possible ideas and solutions to your landscaping and outdoor lighting needs.
Steps For Drawing The Plan
- Indicate the compass directions in relation to the house by drawing an arrow (N->) pointing north.
- Measure each property line and record the measurements.
- Accurately locate one corner of the house on the plan by measuring the distance from the back edge of the curb or edge of the street and nearest property line. From this corner of the house, measure each side of the house and place it onto the plan.
- Locate other existing features on the plan by measuring from known reference points, such as the street, property line or house.
- Identify potential outdoor living and entertaining areas. Terraces and patios are now an integral part of many homes. They should be located, if possible, where they will receive summer breezes and afternoon shade. If sun is a problem, add trees or overhead shading structures.
- Once key features are located on the plan, it is now time to decide which of these will require outdoor lighting. Some will need functional lighting e.g. patios and decks, paths and walkways, others will be lit for aesthetic value and other lighting will be for security purposes.
- Don’t go overboard with the number of lights. It increases the costs for installation, maintenance and the running the outdoor lighting. Too many lights also don’t look good.
Note: The best (and most used) outdoor living areas are usually located adjacent to living areas of the house where they can easily be served and seen from inside. Even when they are not in use, well-planned, attractive decks and terraces adjacent to the house give a feeling of added space to interior rooms. A terrace is sometimes placed away from the home to take advantage of a striking view, good afternoon breezes, or the shade of a large tree.
Feature and Aesthetic Lighting
There may be some striking features on your property that you wish to highlight. There are a huge rang eof lights available. Again be restrained - less is more here - and remember that just like you trees and shrubs don’t like to be brightly illuminated night after night. It interferes with their natural rest cycles.
Lighting Paths and Entrance Areas
The amount of path lighting required depends on:
(a) The amount of ambient light from other sources, such as streetlights, “always on” security lights and outdoor lighting attached to your home and outbuildings.
(b) The smoothness of the surface of the walkway, the presence of steps.
Outdoor lights linked to motion detectors are a popular and efficient choice for entrance areas as the light only comes on when needed.
Security Lighting
The main objectives with outdoor security lighting are to illuminate dark areas and detect and recognize movement in “protected areas”.
The best vision with outdoor lighting is obtained from downward directed and shielded security lighting that is “always on”, supplemented with instant-on lighting triggered by motion detectors.
Overall, the best position for security lights is mounted as high as possible on your property, directing light in a downward position for safe and reliable operation.
Motion detectors sense movement and turn outdoor security lights on when movement is detected and are ideal for both security lighting and energy management. They are often used in conjunction with floodlights that raise the overall brightness. However, the aesthetic drawback of floodlights is they can make you home look like a jail.