Illuminate Your Garden

17th November 2016
Estimated reading time 3 minutes

A newly landscaped garden is a pride and joy for many. A patch of outdoor space where the design cannot be found anywhere else, and it’s all yours. Unfortunately, working long hours may prevent you from enjoying the benefits of your garden every day. Whilst low light and short days during winter, mean that it is already dark when you get home. If you find that you’re suffering from this problem, then it might be time to install some landscape lighting.

What is landscape lighting?

Landscape lighting is a set-up of outdoor lights to illuminate your garden. These lights are strategically placed to highlight focal areas such as specimen plants and interesting structures, or to help guide you around your garden by being placed around paving or surrounding patio areas. Not only does this create some stunning nighttime visuals, but allows you to enjoy your garden 24/7.

How does landscape lighting help?

Lighting is one of the most important aspects when designing a landscaped garden. By designing your garden with natural outdoor light in mind, you are able to create focus points of your garden that provide striking visual appeal.

Unfortunately, your designs can lose impact when the natural light fades, which is when landscape lighting comes into it’s own. It can be used to highlight areas of your garden, bringing a whole new look and feel that you don’t find during the day.

It also provides a number of other benefits that allow you to make full use of your garden all day, every day. These include: illuminating pathways so you don’t trip and hurt yourself once it gets dark, providing light to outdoor entertainment areas and acting as a deterrent for potential burglars.

landscape lighting for outdoor space

How can I make the most of landscape lighting?

Using outdoor lighting will always be different according to the design of each garden and how you want to use it. However, there are some general points to consider when deciding what to choose and where to place it:

  • Always think about how the light you are installing will affect the view from indoors. You want to make sure that you are not changing the overall scene with the added light features.
  • Down-lighting provides a gentle and romantic view, imagine it like a full moon on a dark night.
  • Up-lighting is useful for creating a sense of drama, use it against trees to cast shadows across a landscape.
  • Use a mixture of gentle lighting (a soft view) and spotlighting (a focused beam of light on a particular feature) to get the most from your garden.
  • The ideal features to light up include: pathways, patios, trees, water features, architectural features (pillars, stones etc.), and driveways.

garden lights on path

What are the different types of landscape lighting?

To help achieve the effects mentioned above there are a wide range of outdoor lights to choose from:

  • Bullet lights – project a narrow, focused beam for precisely lighting features in your garden
  • Well lights – housed in a waterproof enclosure, these lights are buried next to tall features and used for up-lighting foliage without illuminating tree trunks
  • Down lights – usually located in high up positions such as tree trunks, these lights can be aimed at trees or paths to emit a moonlight effect.
  • Floodlights – a wide angle light and brighter than a well light, the flood light minimises side glare and is useful for lighting up tall trees or wide features such as decorative fences.
  • Wash lights – gives out a very soft light that is useful for illuminating walls or decorative fences.

If you need help designing your garden with an integrated lighting scheme, then Thames Valley Landscapes are here to help. We can illuminate your garden so that you can enjoy your outdoor space even when the sun goes down.

For more information, please contact Thames Valley Landscapes on 01628 629720 or send us an enquiry.

Illuminate Your Garden

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