What if we told you that dramatically improving your landscaping didn’t have to be incredibly expensive?
By adding landscape lighting, you will dramatically improve the appearance of your landscape at night. Further, you will dramatically improve your experience of your landscape at night. Once unseen, now illuminated, your nighttime landscape becomes a source of enjoyment. Landscape lights will have a dramatic effect on your home’s exterior and outdoor living spaces. The effect is both aesthetic and functional.
Most homeowners acknowledge exterior lighting “looks nice,” but often fail to consider the many benefits of landscape lighting. We encourage nearly all of our design/build clients to consider installing a landscape lighting system for the many benefits offered by doing so. Landscape lighting not only maximizes your exterior space but also the time and money that you have invested in making your home and surrounding landscape look their absolute best. The benefits of installing a landscape lighting system include improving functionality, appearance, safety, and home security.
Functionality
Why limit your enjoyment of your landscape, whether that includes a pool, hot tub, patio, deck, or shade structure, to the times of the day during which the sun is shining? Landscape lighting allows you to enjoy your outdoor living space at any time. If you have a patio, deck, or other sitting areas, properly placed lights can provide the light you need to enjoy these areas after dark. For example, floodlights can be used to spread light over a patio, deck, sitting area, or other areas of the yard. Post lights installed in deck posts can illuminate your deck area allowing you to dine or simply relax long after the sun has set.
Additionally, exterior lighting can expand your outdoor living space. At night, the boundaries of your yard give the impression that they are closing in on your home. By adding a lighting system, those boundaries can extend as far as your landscape lights.
Speaking of boundaries, you can also use lights to define the boundaries of your property. Many people have a fence or shrub along their property’s border. By lighting this physical border, you define the actual boundaries of your property.
Appearance
Lighting allows the exterior of your home and surrounding landscape to be visible after the sun has set. It gives your home a more welcoming appearance, as well as increases your home’s curb appeal at night. Additionally, lighting is one of the most effective ways to add ambiance to your property.
A landscape lighting designer will choose specific locations for the lights as to best highlight architectural features of your home, landscaping, and more. Uplighting, for example, can be used to draw attention to specific areas of your home. It can also be used to add a dramatic effect to trees, plants, statues, and more. Lights can also be used to highlight water features, such as pools or waterfalls.
Often under looked, landscape lighting can also impact the appearance of your home’s interior. We like to call it the “black hole effect.” When a home doesn’t have any exterior lighting, all of the home’s windows appear black when viewed from inside. This, in turn, makes the inside of the house feel smaller at night. By adding lighting, it gives the appearance of spaciousness. It can make your inside rooms feel much larger because the windows now expand out into the illuminated exterior.
Safety
Properly placed landscape lights are a surefire way to increase the safety of your landscape for family and guests. Adding lighting to steps, edges of walkways, or tripping hazards makes them visible at night and helps prevent falls or other injury. Lighting walkways and driveways allow your family and visitors to find and enter your home safely and without trouble.
When lighting for safety, it is important to avoid the “runway effect.” A common mistake is to install a whole bunch of path lights and thus make it look like a landing strip at an airport. Instead, a combination of staggered path lights and uplights can be used to light the area while avoiding the “runway effect.”
Security
Speaking of safety, in addition to personal safety, landscape lighting is an effective way to upgrade your home security. To deter unwanted visitors or would-be criminals from your property, install landscape lights to fill your yard with light. When using landscape lights to improve home security, concentrate on covering the darkest areas of your yard, as well as near doors and windows. This makes it difficult to approach a home without being seen.
A well-lit landscape gives the impression that someone is home. Additionally, it gives the impression that your property is well taken care of and you have invested in its appearance.
When asked about landscape lighting systems, we recommend low-voltage LED lighting systems. Low-voltage LED systems require approximately 80% less voltage than halogen lamps. Though LEDs are more expensive than halogen bulbs, they can last up to 50,000 hours depending on the application. Think about that! If you left the lights on 5 hours a day, they should last for around 27 years! You may spend a little more now, but ultimately, you’ll save money in the long run. By installing low-voltage, LED landscape lights, you will enjoy greater savings, longer life, and you can feel good about yourself from an environmental aspect.
At CLC Landscape Design, we primarily use LED lights from an industry leader in LED lighting. As they state on their website, “Landscape lighting is an art.” As such, we recommend you hire a trained professional to plan, install, and maintain a lighting system.
If you’d like to speak with a knowledgeable and experienced landscape lighting designer, contact us today.
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