Don't Miss Out on These 4 Effective Outdoor Lighting Methods
Outdoor lighting can add depth and functionality to your Burr Ridge, IL, landscape design in the evening hours. Consider these four lighting methods for transforming your landscape at night.
Hanging Lighting: The Fixture Takes the Spotlight
There aren’t a lot of lighting methods that create the same kind of charm as hanging lights. One widely used variation of hanging lights is lanterns. These enclosed fixtures can cast a warm blanket of light across your landscape. Lanterns do this by housing a bulb and defusing the light through different colors and materials for an almost magical ambiance. The best thing about lanterns is that they come in many different shapes, sizes, and designs. They can be hung on a secure line to illuminate a large area or they can be hung on poles to shine along the length of a path.
Recessed Lighting: A Subtle Way of Lighting the Way
Recessed lighting offers an effective lighting method that keeps the actual lighting source in seclusion—unlike lanterns, the focus is on the glow created, not the fixture. This effect can be done several ways. One method, commonly used in outdoor kitchen areas, is inserting a waterproof strip of LEDs along a countertop or underneath the counter itself. A similar strategy occurs when lighting is placed underneath a railing; the light helps to safely guide the way along steps or a walkway while few people would think anything of where the light is coming from. You’ll also see recessed lighting used on pool decks if it’s placed under the coping.
Flood Lighting: Brighten an Area
Floodlights, like the name implies, is a lighting method that creates an encompassing beam of light that can be used in two primary ways. You could use floodlights to light up a large area of your property such as a front-entrance walkway or the driveway. For these hardscape features, you may want the floodlights to be set up with motion sensors to illuminate the area only when someone is about to walk or drive up to it. In addition to saving energy and using the bright lights only when necessary, motion sensors can add a security element to your property.
Another common use for floodlights is to highlight a particular feature, such as a water fountain or the poolscape, with either uplighting or downlighting. Uplighting is good for a feature such as a tree since it casts shadows upward, highlighting all of the leafy and texture details along the branches. Downlighting is commonly used when highlighting a manmade feature since it lights up the feature without casting light into someone's eyes.
Tree Lighting: Highlight the Landscape’s Best Features
Carefully placed lighting could really make the best features of your landscape pop. It can be subtle or overly dramatic when lights hit the beautiful trees you have brought into your landscape or have made sure are well-maintained. Why hide them when the lights go down? Putting a spotlight on a specimen tree or shining low lighting from the bottom of the trunk can create a certain tone that is wonderfully inviting on a hot summer night. The shadows will add to the ambience. Your choice of bulb, color, and size can have an effect on the obviousness of the lighting on your favorite softscape features.
