By Chris Ettel
We spend significant money beautifying our landscapes with just the right trees, shrubs, flowers, and hardscaping, but when night falls, all of that effort “goes dark.” As warm weather approaches and we tend to be outdoors more often later into the evenings, wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy our homes and streetscapes even as the darkness deepens? 
Landscape lighting is the answer. And, besides aesthetics, mood, and atmosphere, there are at least two other good reasons to brighten things up a bit: safety and security. Think form and function.
Like anything else, outdoor lighting can be incorporated into your landscape design along a spectrum from minimalism to maxed-out. Here we offer some “bright” ideas and considerations for designing and implementing a landscape lighting plan that is just right for your context.
- Be clear about your goals be they illuminating walkways, driveways, and steps; creating an ambiance for outdoor entertaining; highlighting your home’s architectural and landscape features; or even deterring intruders.
- Respect your neighbors and those coming and going from your home by choosing and positioning fixtures to avoid outdoor light pollution, which comes in many forms: shining a light in your neighbor’s window or your guests’ eyes, washing out the night sky, or creating glare. Shields, collars, and guards are among the considerations that can help.
- Invest in LEDs. Though they cost a bit more than halogen, LEDs offer vastly longer life, are more energy efficient, and withstand shock, vibrations, and inclement weather. With new options on the market every week, LEDs offer nearly unlimited flexibility for dimming, brightening, and creating a design plan with layers of subtlety.
- Gentle, dramatic, elegant? Regardless of the look you desire, landscape lighting can provide it through a strategically-placed mix of down-lighting, up-lighting, and cross-lighting. Down-lighting, referred to as moon lighting, creates a romantic glow, by mounting downward facing fixtures in trees. Up-lighting is positioned at ground level and creates more drama by aiming light directly at elements you wish to feature. Cross-lighting will grace the landscape with more depth by illuminating water features, specimen trees, swings, and arbors from both sides while helping to eliminate shadows.
Here are a few more considerations for various elements of your landscape: For trees, select both up- and down-lighting and be sure to bathe the trunk in light lest the up-lit crown seem to hover unnaturally. In planting beds, establish pools of light spaced at least 20-feet apart to lead the eye through the space. Choose bullet lights to spotlight architectural features of your home with wash lights to fill-in the spaces between. For garden walls, fixtures placed close to the base will bring textures into high relief.
- High wattage bulbs are too much of a good thing. They lend harshness to the landscape when a very different effect was the goal. You may be surprised at how much sophistication even 20 watts can deliver. Consider, as well, volts. Most landscape lighting today is low voltage which is safer to work with and less costly to install than 120-volt systems. A step-down transformer delivers one-tenth of the power, but the effects are, nonetheless, virtually limitless.
- Types of outdoor lighting to consider, as with indoor lighting, include task, accent, and overall achieved through fixtures like bullets (narrower beams), floods (wider beams), garden (on short posts), wash (softer and more diffuse), and well (buried in the ground). Incorporating all of these types of lighting will result in a “fuller” look and feel to your landscape. Timers ensure convenience and energy savings.
Through a combination of artistry, engineering, and electrical know-how, you can look forward to a bit more brightness in your (night) life.
~Chris
