Want to add both function and beauty to your outdoor space? You can do a lot with quality landscape lighting, from showcasing your garden to illuminating paths and walkways. All it takes is a little planning and a good eye for design to properly light some of the most important elements of your landscape.
Let’s take a look at how landscape lighting can make your entire property more appealing by highlighting all the features that make it unique.
The Benefits of Landscape Lighting After Dark
As a homeowner, you’ve likely invested plenty of time and effort into keeping your house in great shape, not to mention your garden and outdoor entertaining spaces.
A comprehensive landscape lighting strategy ensures your hard work won’t fade into the dark after the sun sets each day. Just a few of the top benefits outdoor lighting can bring to your property include:
- Aesthetics. Don’t let your home’s curb appeal disappear after dark. A carefully curated outdoor lighting strategy enhances the nighttime beauty of your home and landscaping, highlighting distinct features of your grounds.
- Security. While most homeowners choose to invest in outdoor lighting purely as a matter of aesthetics, they soon appreciate the added security that strategically placed light fixtures provide. Installing professional outdoor lighting is one of the best things you can do to secure your property and prevent unwanted intruders—of both the human and animal variety. Light is an instant deterrent to unwelcome visitors after dark, offering homeowners increased peace of mind.
- Accessibility. Whether you love to entertain outdoors or you simply appreciate a twilight stroll in your garden, landscape lighting illuminates paths, walkways, steps and other hardscape features of your property. Say goodbye to stumbling and fumbling through your yard and hello to increased enjoyment of your landscaping after the sun goes down.
Tips For How to Properly Light Landscape Foliage
The true magic of outdoor lighting is the beautiful ambiance and atmosphere it creates. From showcasing the variegated foliage of tall trees to highlighting accent plants, there are some tried and true outdoor lighting strategies that can make flowers, shrubs, trees and other important landscape features truly stand out against a nighttime backdrop.
- Trees. While spotlighting trees from the ground up can create dramatic effects—especially when the shadow of the foliage is projected on walls—down lighting is another great way to highlight the unique natural beauty of trees. Place spotlights in the trees themselves and direct the beam of light down to the ground to create the charming effect of dappled moonlight on your yard or driveway.
- Shrubs. Silhouetting is a unique lighting effect that’s well-suited for highlighting interesting-shaped shrubbery in your yard. Place a spotlight or other light source directly behind the plants to create dramatic silhouettes. Ensure the light source is completely hidden from view for best results.
- Flowers. Turn your flowers into a focal point with broadcast lighting. These lights can be embedded into the flowerbeds with stakes, throwing a pool of light downward and away from the eyes to illuminate the interesting texture and colour of flowers. Outdoor garden light fixtures can be strategically located to spill light onto nearby paths, walkways or terraces, helping you safely navigate your grounds and fully appreciate the beauty of your flowers.
- Hanging plants. Highlight beautiful hanging baskets from above with spotlights. This lighting strategy is similar to the down lighting technique used for trees, using spotlights to direct the light down to the top of the baskets, showcasing the lovely flowers and foliage inside.
- Vines and ivy. Uplighting with spotlights is the best way to showcase the textural details of ivy and other climbing vines. Simply install spotlights a few feet from the walls or trellises where the climbing vines live and direct the light upward to wash them with light. An upward angle creates interesting visual effects that can showcase the density of these plants.
- Accent plants. Special plants like topiary or flowering bushes can take on a unique look after dark with the right lighting effects. While some simple string lights set within the plants create a look that’s always charming, uplighting with spotlights is another excellent technique that can truly turn your most eye-catching plants into the star of the show after dark.
Cast a Light on Your Landscape’s Natural Greenery
If you’ve taken the time and effort to create a stunning landscape full of lush greenery, striking flowers and verdant trees, why not show off your hard work even after the sun goes down?
Quality landscape lighting with professional-grade fixtures not only highlights the beauty of special features in your landscape, it also increases safety and navigability, extending the hours you can use your yard and creating a gorgeous nighttime landscape that will become the envy of the entire neighborhood.
Feature image: Cole Freeman; Image 1: Daiga Ellaby
