Tips for Designing Landscape Lighting

A nice artfully lit landscape can add beauty to your property, but you'd be surprised what a challenge it can be to make it look relatively natural. You want some drama, but you don't want pathways looking like landing strips and an annoying glare coming from every tree. Here are a few design tips for when you plan your landscape lighting:

• Although you will eventually want to draw a rough plan on paper for a shopping list, one of the best ways to try out different effects is to go out to the yard at night with a good flashlight. You won't see the total effect, but you will get an idea about individual situations. Manufacturers of fixtures are also a great design source.
• You don't want to light everything, start with safety. Walkways and stairs are the most important. There are fixtures made for each of these situations.
• Then move on to accent lighting. Pick out features-a group of trees or a big rock-that would stand out when lit. Remember low voltage lighting brings out shape and texture. However, resist the temptation to light every tree in your yard.
• It's common to use too many fixtures. On walkways, just light one side of the path or stagger the fixtures, alternating between sides. On curved paths, just light the inside of the curve.
• Pick fixtures that do the job that particular location calls for. You can purchase well lights that bury in the ground for a nice uplighting effect in bushes and ornamental grasses, spot lights are used to focus on particular features, down lights that put light the ground around them, tier lights give more general lighting, and lots of others. So, choose an edge fixture or down light for a path since you don't need to light the area around it or above it.
• Consider these effects, which can be achieved with one or more lights:
  • Uplighting - used to accent trees with the fixture at the base
  • Downlighting - same, only the fixture is up high and shines down
  • Spotlighting - creates a focal point by focusing a spot light on it
  • Backlighting - the feature is silhouetted by putting the fixture behind it
  • Crosslighting - using two fixtures from different directions to give even more dimensionality to a feature
• If this all sounds a bit complicated, remember that even after you have laid the cable for the fixtures, you can try an effect out in a location and still change your mind since this low-voltage cable is "self healing." You can try it in a new location until you find one that works for your situation.