In real estate, location is everything, and the same principle applies to lighting your home’s landscape. The way you arrange lights around your property affects how passersby perceive your home (and your exterior design style).
To light your home like a work of art, you need to understand the most essential elements of house lighting positioning. See your home in the most favorable light and avoid common lighting mistakes by using these five tips.
1. Direct Light Fixtures Away From Windows and Doors
When using color changing outdoor lights to add extra ambiance to the front of your house, you should still have a clear view outside windows and doors. For landscape lighting, it’s important to avoid pointing fixtures directly at doors or windows. The glare from outdoor lights makes it hard to see outside, and backlighting can block suspicious objects and figures in darker areas. Overcome this obstacle by positioning lights at an angle.
2. Position Lights Where You Can Bury Wires
As you plan where you want to position lights in your front yard, think about the best places to bury wires. Left exposed, wires can become electrical and fire hazards. If you live in an area that experiences severe weather, the elements can weaken the coating on unburied wires.
Occasionally, survey your yard for signs of wiring peeking through the ground. If you have pets or kids, they may get curious and unearth wires. Try to position cables in places where they can’t access them.
3. Point Path Lines Downward
Path lights illuminate paths and walkways. The lights are typically pointed downward to cast light on the ground in front of them. This can make your property more attractive and safer to navigate at night.
When positioning path lights, it is important to space them on both sides of the path evenly. This helps create a balanced look. Additionally, standard path lights with domes typically direct light downward. This is helpful so that unshaded path lights do not blind you.
4. Harness the Power of Moonlighting and Uplighting
The tall landscape features you want to highlight require tall beams of light. Moonlighting and uplighting are two techniques you can use. Tile Importer advises that their Cement Sheet Cladding options in Melbourne is shown off the best under Moonlight or uplighting.
Moonlighting replicates the light of the moon. By positioning a light on a tree and directing the beam downward, you can create a display of shadows. With uplighting, you position directional or well lights underneath a waterfall, an interesting tree, or another landscape feature you want to highlight.
5. Maximize Grazing, Silhouetting, and Shadowing
There are other ways to use uplighting to draw attention to your home’s exterior walls and features around them. Three uplighting techniques used in landscape light positioning include silhouetting, shadowing, and grazing.
With silhouetting, you cast an even light on an exterior wall from a wide angle. By positioning the fixture between the wall and a feature, the technique creates a bright backdrop for the part of your home you want to draw attention to.Â
The shadowing technique casts patterns on the wall to brighten an object. If you have bushes, plants, or anything else close to the ground that you want to spotlight, use shadowing. This lighting technique is especially useful to create visual intrigue if your house has vinyl siding or untextured exterior walls.
Consider using grazing lights to create interesting shadow patterns. To do this, set your light fixture at an acute angle against the wall. Position the lights at least a foot from the wall, angling the fixture away from the surface to avoid hot spots. If you have stones or other asymmetrical surfaces in your front yard, grazing is a creative way to cast interesting shadows and plays of light.
By following these five landscape lighting tips, you can create a beautiful and welcoming front entrance for your home.
