Lighting your outdoor spaces
We know it's Autumn at Light My Space when we see a big increase in requests for garden and landscape lighting. Landscape lighting can enhance the ambience of your exterior spaces as much as the planting, ornaments and water features.
There are countless lighting options available to create different effects depending on what you want to achieve – a cosy seating space, lush-looking planting, accentuating mature trees or artwork and highlighting garden features. By varying the distance and angle of the light fixtures, you can experiment with different lighting effects to create a unique landscape architecture.
The placement and selection of lights is critical and it’s easy to do overdo it. Good lighting schemes don’t try to mimic daylight by flooding the landscape with light. The best schemes aim to visually enhance the features you love and fade out the areas you don’t want to draw attention to. The balance of shadow and light done correctly will visually enhance textures, colours and features that you can experience outdoors, appreciate from indoors and provide enough coverage where needed for your safety and security needs.
When thinking about your lighting, make sure you consider all the features of your exterior space, and the effects that you want to create, such as:
- Silhouetting – an illuminated backdrop behind a feature or planting
- Shadowing – indirect or oblique light to create a softer shadow
- Wall washing – creates an even, reflected glow
- Up-lighting – gives a greater contrast and V-shaped light spread than wall-washing
- Moonlighting – creates attractive shadow patterns on the ground, with a natural and indirect appearance
- Down-lighting – Similar to the up-lighting technique but creating an inverted V-shape
- Accenting – draws special attention to a specific feature e.g. to point out an architectural design, tree, or water feature
- Path-lighting – used for guiding a route or marking a boundary such as paths, driveways, ponds/pools and patios
If you want to enjoy your garden and outdoor spaces all year round, think about investing in some good quality landscape lighting. All of our services can be conducted remotely by phone, video calls and using online collaboration tools.
