Does your landscape look as great at night as in the light of day? Landscape lighting is an essential piece of a home’s curb appeal, outdoor living ambience, and general safety. However, you can put the spotlight on some of the best aspects of your landscape to make your landscape an outdoor work of art in the process. You can highlight your favorite landscape features with these four landscape lighting ideas in Yorktown and Briarcliff Manor, NY.
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The Ground Surface
The most important function of any landscape is to provide safe passage from the street to the home, to provide a safe and welcoming environment. This is also an opportunity to highlight the beauty of your paver or natural stone walkway, patio, pool deck, and even driveway.
Place pathway lights near the ground on the borders of your driveway and walkway. This will help focus the energy of the lights to what needs to be seen, reducing energy usage in the process. The strategy will also help keep eyes out of direct contact with the light sources and reduce the amount of contrasting shadows. If you have a retaining wall along a walkway, incorporate subtle lighting under the lip of the capstone to light the way and emphasize the textures of the wall.
To avoid a stark runway effect, place a few subtle lights “randomly” throughout your landscape to add dimension and reduce the contrast between well-lit hardscapes and a dark softscape. Here’s where solar-powered pathway lights are particularly useful. Identify the dark spots, and install a light in that spot. The secret to success with this technique is to make the effect subtle, to avoid taking away from the magic of the night. The whole landscape will look more intentional and beautiful.
A word of caution about solar-powered pathway lights: while they can reduce your energy bill, they won’t work after consecutive days of cloud cover or if they’re covered in snow. For safety purposes, hard-wired pathway lighting is the best option: save the solar lights for accent lighting.
Highlight Special Features with Spotlights
Highlighting the most beautiful parts of your landscape often utilizes the spotlighting technique which emphasizes textures and adds ambient light. Spotlighting uses a light at ground level that’s angled upwards and aimed at the feature you want to display, such as a statue, fountain, or an interesting tree.
Use the Properties of Water
Using the reflective and refractive properties of water in your lighting theme will make any landscape more dramatic. If you have a pool, you are already aware of the welcoming soft blue glow that emanates from the pool. You can also use smaller water features such as fountains or waterfalls to add light to your landscape. You could even choose LED bulbs that have the ability to change colors, to change the atmosphere for a party or set a holiday mood.
Variety
The best results come from using a variety of techniques. If all of your trees are illuminated with a spotlight at their base, the look will be artificial. Keep some trees dark; use a moonlighting technique on one key tree (placing a whitish/bluish light high in the canopy to mimic the effect of moonlight filtering through the branches). Use silhouette lighting for any trees alongside a bare wall. Use both uplighting and downlighting, as well as a soft wash effect that bounces light off a larger surface such as the siding.
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