If you're looking for landscape lighting ideas, look no further. This article will help you understand the basics of landscape design and help you determine the best landscape lighting for your home and garden.
It is important to choose the right outdoor lighting for your landscaping in order to create the desired effect and ambiance. The design should compliment the space and highlight its best aesthetic features. Lighting should also enhance the visual comfort of you and your guests. You'll also have much more pleasing results if you design the lighting scheme, rather than just setting out a few lights.
As a landscaper, we understand how to use lighting to illuminate the beautiful landscape patterns, styles, and features we've created. For example, lighting is most effective when it creates shadowing. It's important to have a designer, rather than an electrician, who can skillfully create these dramatic effects, along with highlighting plants structural elements.
Designing Your Landscape Lighting
When choosing different lighting options to brighten up your landscape, there are some important things to consider. Here’s some helpful advice for you:
No Electrician Needed
Outdoor lighting is low voltage (12v), which means there is no shock hazard, so it does not require an electrician to install and no permits are needed. Instead you can have a landscaper experienced in landscape lighting, like Marshall Grain, create the ideal mood for your outdoor surroundings.
Wired Lighting Vs. Solar Lights
Power cords should never be stretched across your lawn or other area where they can be damaged by weed whackers or lawn mowers. Instead wiring should be buried within PVC pipe to protect it from damage.
You may be tempted to skip using wired lights in favor of installing solar powered lighting, however, our advice is don't. Presently available solar powered lights are poor quality and inadequate for enhancing the look of your landscape.
Look at Your Space from the Point of View of Your Home
Your yard and landscape appear different when you look at them from inside your house. When choosing lighting patterns and design in your landscape, you should consider how the pathways, gardens and patios look from the house as well as from outside.
For instance, path lighting looks great in garden areas, while lit shrubbery or gardens visible from dining or living rooms provide a room-expanding perspective to the outdoors at night.
Landscape Lighting Ideas
Outdoor lights offer plenty of variety. These are the most popular ones:
Spotlights
These lights point in a single direction, giving a wall-grazing, uplight appearance. They can cover a wide space, illuminating patios, walls, plants, shrubs, and statues.
Floodlights
These are more commonly used to illuminate large spaces, with their elevation providing comprehensive coverage.
Up/Downlights
These lights are useful for highlighting hardscape features like statues, fountains, and wall patterns.
LEDs
Almost all landscape lighting now uses LEDs because they are cheaper than incandescent or halogen bulbs because they last longer and use up much less energy (which is why you only need 12V power).
Why Landscape Lighting?
If you’re considering having lighting installations done in your landscape, you’ll be getting these benefits:
Security
With the added lights, you can rest easy knowing that thieves are less likely to make burglary attempts. Here, you’ll have to combine decorative, ambient lighting with the simple need for illumination.
Home Value Appreciation
Excellent and efficient outdoor lighting can increase the value of your property and rank it up in real estate listings. If the design and layout are exceptional, it adds to the curb appeal, and you could soon have a gaggle of potential buyers looking at your property.
See more benefits of landscape lighting.
When Should I Get Landscape Lighting?
Beautiful lighting can illuminate and highlight the best features of your landscape at night, providing a serene ambiance and beauty to relax your mind and thrill your senses.
So, don’t wait around hoping that your garden, yard, or landscape will beautify itself. Shoot us an mail or call us 817-416-6600 to give your landscape a luxurious touch of lighting.