Outdoor Landscape Lighting Installation: What Gets Lit and Why|Thinking About Landscape Lighting

What landscape lighting is for

Where roofline lighting works on the building, landscape lighting handles everything below it: the walk, the beds, the trees, the steps. The goal is to see the tree, not the light pointed at it. Done badly, you get a line of glowing dots along the path and not much else.

The pieces of a plan

Path lighting is usually the starting point, because it is the part that does a job every night. Uplighting on the trees worth showing changes the whole front of a property after dark. Then there are beds and low plantings, stairs and walls where the light is about footing, and the parking area.

Landscape, patio and security lighting overlap

Homeowners rarely want one category. Out back, the patio only gets used after dark if it has light. Security lighting deals with the corners of the lot, which is a different job from making a tree look good. Accent lighting handles the detail.

Where landscape lighting goes wrong

The most common mistake is too much of it. A yard lit evenly at every point has no depth, and flat is the one thing you were trying to avoid. The second mistake is aiming fixtures where people walk, so the path lights blind you instead of showing the path. The third is ignoring how the yard will look in five years, when the shrub in front of the uplight has doubled.

The commercial side

On commercial property the goals shift. A restaurant patio needs light people want to sit under. A parking area is about people getting to their cars. A neighborhood entrance sets the tone for everything behind it, which is why entry lighting gets attention in planned developments.

Landscape lighting and roofline lighting in one plan

Roofline lighting handles the building. The yard is a separate job. Together they finish the picture. Roofline light outlines the building, and landscape light gives the ground in front of it depth.Doing them in one plan beats adding one to the other later. If the budget has to be split, ask which half does more for your property, and it is not always the roofline.Unlike a roofline system, ground level fixtures https://brooksthnv487.juniperbrief.com/posts/christmas-light-installation-design-install-takedown-and-storage-should-you-hire-out-your-christmas-light-installation shift. Fixtures shift over time, plantings grow up in front of them, and the aim wanders. Once a year it is worth walking the yard and correcting the aim, which is a short job with a visible result.

Where to go from here

The plan comes from walking the property, not picked from a page. EverCrest Lighting installs landscape lighting along with patio, accent, security and permanent roofline lighting for residential and commercial properties. Working out of Greenville, South Carolina, they cover Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina. Consultations are free, and the design gets built around your yard. Reach them at (864) 252-1732 or [email protected].

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