The right lighting determines your outdoor experience after the sun goes down. The main purpose of outdoor lighting is to provide safety and security - but these objectives can be achieved in beautiful and artistic ways. Various light fixtures can highlight outdoor features and even become features themselves. The best strategy is to combine several different lighting techniques. Here are the many ways a landscape designer can transform a backyard with an outdoor lighting plan in Exeter Township, PA.
Related: 7 Outdoor Lighting Design Ideas That Match Unique Backyard Designs in Lebanon, PA
The Pool and Water Features
Any water feature, large or small, is beautiful during the day but it can become a show-stopper at night. The most functional and dramatic lighting technique for a water feature is submersible lighting. By placing a light source (or a series of lights) under the water’s surface - normally along the vertical surfaces or pointing down to avoid glare, you can create a tranquil blue glow at night. Even on the stillest gazing pool, the breeze will cause ripples and create an effect of dancing shadows that is sure to create a dazzling atmosphere.
Plants and Trees
Even though most plants are typically at their most beautiful during the day, certain plants - most notably trees - can be highlighted after dark to provide interesting illumination and bring attention to their features. Spotlighting and moonlighting are two lighting techniques that work well with trees.
Sometimes there’s a landscape feature that deserves to be in the spotlight. This could be a statue, a fountain, or a magnificent old tree. However beautiful these objects are during the day, spotlighting turns them into dramatic focal points at night. Spotlighting enhances textures such as tree bark, the masonry on a retaining wall, or a rugged rock outcrop, while adding light to otherwise dark areas of the landscape.
Moonlighting mimics the visual effects of a full moon as its bluish-white light filters gently through a tree canopy to the ground, where it casts interesting shadows. As the tree sways in the breeze, the light will create a dancing, shimmering effect that brings a dynamic energy to your nighttime atmosphere.
Smaller plants can serve to disguise landscape light fixtures during the day. Lighting shrubs makes them visible and attractive at night, and it adds texture as well as safety, such as low-lying lights along a walkway hedge.
String Lighting
Bring life to any party with string lights. This simple strategy is very flexible, as the string of lights can be moved anywhere there is a tall enough object to safely hang them.
Creative and Innovative Solutions
LED fixtures have transformed the landscape lighting industry. They are compact and the bulbs last for many, many years, which means they can be installed in hard-to-reach places that allow for creative lighting strategies for landscape illumination. Some bulbs can even change color, so you can put on a dazzling show for your guests or create a cozy experience for relaxed family evenings by the fire.
A Combination of Strategies
A combination of different lighting strategies will create striking visual textures while providing you with just the right intensity of light for each zone (more lighting at your outdoor kitchen, and more subtle lighting by the fire pit, for example). Since LEDs come in such a huge variety of styles and wattages, you can do away with the glare of a single bright bulb at your driveway and instead, welcome guests in style by using creative lighting strategies to safely and beautifully light the way.
Related: 4 Signs Your Landscape Design Could Use Updated Outdoor Lighting in Allentown PA
