Landscape Lighting Ideas and Designs

With creative landscape lighting plans, your gardens become more spectacular at night than during the day. A well illuminated yard at night will bring your gardens and landscaping to life. Exterior designs are a wave of coordinating outdoor, path and deck accessories.

By using basic techniques can enlighten the backyard giving it a more professional feel. Illuminate with a layering effect. By creating a variety of up down and back illumination, can bathe your home with soothing ambience and quiet beauty. When planning your home exterior for beauty and safety, don't forget that energy efficiency should always be keep in mind.

BALANCE and SIMPLICITY are key tools for creating a pleasing and enjoyable look for your gardens throughout the year. For years outdoor fixtures consisted of one or two hanging by your front door maybe a postlight in your front lawn and a floodlight behind your home. Now you can find many more ideas and designs to improve security, safety and ambience. Using professional principles of lighting technology your can transform you gardens into a work of art.

Your landscape projects can accent your lawns and gardens for all the season of the year. In the spring it will give a magical ambience of seeing the first blossoms sneaking out from beneath the new growth. In summer without a well lit plan, you limit the many hours of enjoyment that could be spent in your gardens. In the fall it can enhance the changing colors of the folage giving it a picturesque look and subtle beauty. In winter it can glimmer and sparkle, enlighten the fresh blanket of newly fallen snow.

DOWNLIGHTING works well for basic illumination for pathways, steps, decks or simply for safety. It will help to give you a shadowing effect. Make sure they are not giving an irritating glare into neighbors yards.

BY UPLIGHTING you can dramatize areas you are illuminating, with spot and floodlight fixtures. Using uplighting to highlight a picturesque tree or bush will bring focus to the area. Uplighting an architectural wall on an angle will bring out the textures. If angled through the tree and bushes it will give a soft glow and ambience to the back walls, giving a grazing effect.

BACKLIGHTING cast indirect silhouettes and creates shadows by reflecting off a vertical surface behind it. Example: By angling the light beam to shine on the house,landscaping behind will be silhouetted making it standout from its background.

Some styles of low level pathways fixtures that line driveways can cause hot spots that will call to much attention to themselves. They are designed to project the light in all directions. A conical fixture that illuminates downward will be less noticable.

SPOTLIGHTING is an effective technique for getting a picturesque tree or architectural object noticed. Be selective and chose only one or two focal points, more can be confusing.

BY CROSS LIGHTING you can achieve a three dimensional effect. You can sidelight the foliage by using two or more focusing fixtures. When illuminaing an object from below aim from different directions. Be sure to put fixtures so they are not glaring in anyones eyes.

SPREAD LIGHTING highlights ground cover and low shrubbery. They are usaully set close to the ground giving textures, color and shapes to your garden and flower beds. They define the edge of your lawn or walk.

Illuminating paths around your home, or combining different types of application to achieve a well lit path or walkway. Path lighting should illuminate the area without glare.

Work the fixtures subtly into the landscape rather than stick them out as annoying scources of glare. Choose styles of fixtures that fit the area and illumination you want to acheive. Check out LED lighing new technology page for information about energy saving and long life.

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