Landscape lighting can add beauty to your home as well as provide increased safety on your property. Lighting design can be used to light pathways, highlight your homes architecture, and deter intruders. When considering adding lighting to your landscaping, it is important to find the right balance of lighting. Focus on adding lighting to main activity areas like driveways, entrances, pathways, dark areas around windows, and stairs and main focal points such as fountains, trees, or statues. The following landscape lighting basics can help make the most of your lighting.
Up-lighting: Up-lighting is placing a light facing upward toward an object to illuminate it. This works well for highlighting the focal points of your landscape or home. Use it sparingly to highlight objects around your yard like statues, trees, flag poles, and fountains.
Down-lighting: Down-lighting is used to illuminate large areas. It works well for illuminating entertainment areas such as a patio or a deck. It also helps to deter intruders.
Accent Lighting: Accent lighting is an excellent choice for lighting paths and stairs by placing lights along both edges of a path or a staircase. This looks beautiful and has the added safety feature of helping prevent people from tripping and falling. Accent lighting can also add focus to low-lying flowers, shrubs, and ponds.