When it comes to landscape lighting, you’ll find that one of the most significant steps in the design and planning process involves answering the following question: what do you hope to accomplish? Because landscape lighting is all about lighting pathways, making it possible to enjoy your yard, deck or patio even after the sun has set, and creating texture, it’s important to spend some time thinking about the look that you would like to create. After all, outdoor lighting comes in a variety of styles and there are a number of different ways to design with light.
For example, one common way of using landscape lighting is to create uplighting – to showcase a garden, shrubbery, a great tree or other feature or installation – by installing outdoor lighting that casts a spotlight from below. This type of lighting helps to draw the eye to a part of your lawn.
However, uplighting isn’t the only landscape lighting option that’s available to you when you start to plan out the ways in which you will work with light in your yard. Using wash lights, you can focus on backlighting and creating the appearance of silhouettes; by lighting the area behind a feature of your lawn that you want to showcase, those who are passing by your home will see something remarkably different at night than what they see by day.
Of course, not everyone is looking to create an extremely dramatic effect when they start to think about landscape lighting. Others are thinking about low voltage outdoor lighting as a way of ensuring the safety of those who are on their property. For them, downlighting – using light fixtures that are placed above eye level – is something that is often looked at; with this style of landscape lighting, it’s easy to illuminate large areas within a yard.
On the other hand, those who don’t do a great deal of entertaining may be looking at outdoor lighting in a far simpler way: all that they hope to accomplish with their lighting is to ensure that their entryways are lit, their sidewalk has enough light so that those who approach their homes are less likely to risk injury in the dark or to light their driveways to keep guests from missing the driveway and driving on the lawn.
Once you’ve looked at a lot of the options that are available to you and you’ve taken the time to focus on what you would like to accomplish with your outdoor lighting, the real planning stages can begin. Once you know what you would like to do with your landscape lighting, it’s time to start looking at all of the low voltage lighting options that are available to you.
In addition to looking at the various types of lighting features that are available for landscape lighting, you’ll want to take the time to look at what your lighting needs are. Which focal points do you hope to highlights? Are you trying to create a theme or simply to shape the way that others see your home at night? How much outdoor light do you actually need in order to accomplish the goals that you’ve set for yourself?
The answers to these questions, of course, are also going to play a significant role when it comes to determining the best way of achieving your lighting goals. After all, in addition to choosing the right fixtures and the right lighting plan, it’s important to know that you’re working with the right considerations for your electrical system and the demands that will be put on the transformer. Finally, it’s important to look at whether or not the placement of your landscape lighting fixtures is going to be permanent or if you may want to be able to move things around at a later point in time.
Ultimately, choosing the right outdoor lighting is going to come down to personal preference. The design and planning stage will allow you to look at all of your options and to discover the one that is best for achieving your landscape lighting goals – whether you choose to figure it out on your own or to hire someone who can create the design and install lighting for you.
