Your landscape should be a blend of beautiful scenery and flora. This way, you can enjoy being outside both during the day and at night. At least, you can see what is in your yard during the day and enjoy its charm. But what about at night? You can only make your yard comfortable and usable at night if you have a good landscape lighting technique. The perfect lighting technique can help you transform your outdoors into a place you and your guests can rest at night.
Here are seven landscape lighting techniques that are trending.
1. Path Lighting
Path lighting is an innovative way to light a landscape. In this technique, both the lights and the fixtures will show. This is what makes it different from most discreet lighting techniques in which only the lights show.
You can use decorated lighting fixtures to improve the look of your yard at night. What you need is a good designer who can come up with an appealing design. Pathways aren’t the only things path lighting lights. Homeowners also use it to frame some spaces and features. For example, you can use it to light your seating area, water fountain, and even fish pond.
2. Downlighting and Uplighting
Just as the names imply, downlighting is when the lights face down, and uplighting is where they face up. These lights are very attractive at night. You can choose a full-bodied or ambient light to highlight the most attractive fixtures in your landscape. Use downlights or uplights to highlight the outdoor fireplace, garden sculptures, retaining walls, water features, and trees.
By using different colors, uplighting or downlighting can emphasize the textures of the features in your landscape. Try to play with the light colors, fixtures, and lighting angles to achieve a dramatic effect.
3. Silhouette Lighting
If you know what a silhouette is, then you will easily understand this technique. In this technique, homeowners place the source of light behind an opaque object. This creates a shadow with a radiant outline. Silhouette lighting aims to hide the fixtures and allows the light to take center stage.
Silhouetting requires an expert’s hands. This expert must be someone who can make sure the lighting will accentuate the most attractive elements in a landscape. Homeowners also use silhouette lighting to hide unsightly elements. This technique can bring out the best in your trees, siding, or fence.
4. Moonlighting
If the trees in your yard have sprawling canopies, they can make it dark even during moonlit nights. This is also the case if you have some tall structures in your home.
You can use the moonlighting technique to bring your yard to life at night. Use the trees or the tall structures to support your lights and make the lights face downward.
When soft lights are high up, they will create an effect that resembles moonlight. Here, also, you can use your creativity to mix colors and different light intensities to bring a calming glow to your yard.
5. Accent Lighting
Using the right accent lighting will make your landscape both attractive and appealing to the eyes. It also gives you an assurance of safety when you are outdoors at night. This technique mimics the effect of natural moonlight. This can become more realistic if you have many trees in your landscape.
Accent lighting can also highlight the architectural and artistic features in your home. Use small lights in your garden or use lights to line your walkway to emphasize the landscape’s specific features.
You can also add decorative lanterns to draw attention to the garden, outdoor walkways, architectural features, yard art, and trees. The greatest advantage of accent lights is that you can easily manipulate them by changing the angle.
6. Wall washing and wall grazing
Wall washing and wall grazing are two methods used by landscape contractors to illuminate solid objects. These two methods are technically similar. The only difference is how far the illuminated object is from the light (lighting fixture).
In wash lighting, the distance is about 12 inches or more from the illuminated object. This gives an even and flat layer of illumination with texturing. Wall washing looks marvelous on living hedges and walls. In wall grazing, you shine the light at an angle onto the target object. Therefore, it accentuates the attractiveness of the interesting or rough textures of the surface by creating shadows.
7. Shadow Lighting
Homeowners mainly use shadow lighting to accentuate the looks of a particular feature. Use it on a yard, a tree, or shrub. You can also use it on other objects in your yard.
Place a light fixture near the base of an object, then aim the fixture toward a wall nearby. This will create an attractive soft shadow on the wall.
This technique works well if you use the trees with delicate and open foliage in your yard. Shadowing will make your landscape look dramatic because shadows from near the base of objects look bigger. Shadowing is the reverse of silhouetting and is a very common landscape lighting technique.
Lighting Fixtures
You must invest in high-quality and attractive lighting fixtures with whichever method of lighting you have decided to use. These features are not only part of your home decoration, but they also help you hold the lights.
Therefore, you should make sure you install durable fixtures resistant to cracking, corrosion, or rusting. You want to protect them against the elements and other hazards, such as animal urine, weed whackers, water, and sunlight.
Final Words
The installation of landscape lighting is something you can’t do on your own. You need an expert landscaper or contractor to do the job. Doing the right thing will save you both time and money.
An experienced landscaper knows what type of lights can suit your landscape. He or she can even help you choose the best lighting fixtures. Use the above landscape lighting techniques to bring different effects to different parts of your home.