Attractive Lighting Ideas For Landscaping Features

You've probably spent time and money making your landscaping beautiful. Perhaps you even have special features such as a sculpture, fountain, water feature, or ornamental trees. You've likely incorporated your patio or deck into the overall outdoor ambiance. However, unless you only want to enjoy your landscaping during daylight hours, you need to plan for landscape lighting that enhances your yard.

All Around View

An important consideration with landscape lighting is how it makes your yard look from different vantage points. You may want passersby to enjoy the view, which means paying attention to the aesthetics from the street. However, you should also consider how the lighting effects look from your deck or patio as well as from the house. As you plan your lighting, consider which yard focal points present themselves from your windows and from your patio. For instance, you may have placed a fountain so that you can see it from the kitchen. If so, you'll want to illuminate the fountain so it's visible at night from the same kitchen window.

Illuminating A Tree

If you have any kind of tree near your deck or patio, you'll want to illuminate it. You have different options, depending what effect you want. For instance, if the tree is near enough to your deck, you may want a downlighting effect. With this, contractors place lighting in the branches and aim them down at your deck for gentle, diffuse light. The effect is one of the moon shining through the branches. If you want to highlight the tree itself, consider up-lighting or grazing. With up-lighting, the fixtures are placed so that they illuminate the canopy. With grazing, spread-lights are aimed to highlight the texture of the trunk instead.

Landscaping Silhouette

If you have architectural plants, sculptures or other accent pieces, silhouetting is an attractive effect. For this effect, contractors place a spread light between the item and a wall or fence. When the light is on, the item is cast into a gentle silhouette against the structure. For example, this effect would create visual interest at night if you have an architectural plant, such as bamboo or saguaro cactus, near a fence. It's also ideal for highlighting the shape of a statue, birdbath, fountain, or other yard art.

Gentle Pond Lighting

There are two important considerations for illuminating a pond: the first is safety – you don't want guests stepping into the pond in the dark -- and the other is to highlight the water feature itself. For this reason, the Landscaping Network suggests two approaches. First, have gentle lights placed at the perimeter that make the surface of the water glow. This also defines the edges of the pond. Second, you could provide additional glow with a subdued light submerged in the water. This is especially attractive to highlight a waterfall or other special feature of the pond.

Utilize landscape lighting to make your yard beautiful even at night. If you're interested in looking for more information or ideas, look at this web-site.