Bring Your Wheaton, IL, Brick Patio to Life With a Creative Outdoor Lighting Plan

Your brick patio is likely one of your favorite places to relax and entertain. Brick is an exceptional material that has the incredible ability to blend the natural elements with the man-made. The natural tones and textures of brick might look great in the sunlight, but after dark you’ll want to appreciate your brick patio just as much. You can bring your Wheaton, IL, brick patio to life with a creative outdoor lighting plan.

Combine Landscape Lighting Strategies

Successful outdoor lighting plans utilize a combination of a few different lighting strategies. All together, the combined strategies will create complex layers, increasing depth perception to create a safe and welcoming feeling in your landscape. Even better, your friends and family will be able to appreciate the beauty of your landscape after sunset.

Before we talk about specific lighting strategies for your brick patio, keep one “rule” in mind: less is more. A single light fixture can illuminate more than you might think. This means that a few bright lights aren’t the answer. You’ll get a much more pleasant result from using more low-voltage lights.

Hard-Wired Pathway Lighting

The most important thing you can do in your outdoor lighting plan is create a safe place to walk. Unsurprisingly, many people are injured every day from stumbling around in the dark and an injury in your backyard is the last thing you need when entertaining friends or just relaxing. Even stubbing a toe can put a dent in your evening.

Use hard-wired pathway lighting to illuminate your brick patio and the surrounding walkways to be your first steps in enabling a safe and welcoming environment.

A hard-wired system of pathway lights is more advantageous than off-grid solar pathway lights as they will always provide excellent illumination for your brick patio even on the cloudiest day.

Low-lying path lights will be anchored in the perimeter of your brick patio and angled so that they focus their energy on the edges of the patio. This not only illuminates any potential obstacles on the patio like wayward toys or fallen branches, but it also helps define the space of the patio itself. This helps create a sense of intention in your landscape and enhances the feeling of safety and welcome.

The Ambience of Fire

One of the best landscape features you can install in your outdoor living space is a fire pit, a fire table, an outdoor fireplace, or even a combination of fire features. Fire features provide warmth during the chillier evenings as well as substantial ambient light. This flickering light of the dancing flames will be especially beautiful on a brick patio. Fire light expands around the source in a full circle or a semi-circle. Instead of competing with the fire light, embrace the beauty of the flames and let the area around the fire feature be as attractive as it is useful.

Creative Lighting

Spotlighting a significant feature such as an outdoor fireplace, a majestic tree, or a sculpture will not only add interest but ambient light to your brick patio.

Moonlighting (placing lights high in a tree canopy to mimic the effect of moonlight) is another way to add dimension as the shadows cast by this light will make interesting patterns on the patio.

Downlights integrated into a masonry retaining wall or privacy fence can also add light to the space while emphasizing the textures they illuminate.