Outdoor lighting is a bright idea in any season — but especially in the wintertime.
But there’s more to landscape lighting than fashion-runway footlights along the front walk, or blinding security spotlights trained on the garage doors. Outdoor lighting professionals know how to shine the lights on exterior features that matter, and make them memorable.
“Outdoor lighting is done wrong so many times, it’s just kind of an abused art,” says John Pletcher, owner of Natural Accents (), a lighting-design company in Liberty, Mo.
“No lighting at all is better than bad lighting,” he says, “but a landscape that is properly lit — you go into it and it’s just magical.”
Of course, outdoor lighting can make your home and yard safer, but well-designed path lights, for example, do more than show visitors the way to the front door. They make the approach more intriguing by setting up plays of light and shadow. The fixtures are often hidden, so you find yourself enjoying the surroundings, not marching in step with a chorus line of little mushroom-shaped lampshades.
Janet Lennox Moyer, a lighting designer in New York (), has been designing landscape lighting for 35 years, since before high-tech, low-voltage systems were available. Her presentations, workshops and books have influenced a generation of designers, including Pletcher, who has worked as one of the instructors at Moyer’s intensive Landscape Lighting Institute.
Homeowners often think the purpose of garden lights is to improve the public face of the house, but they should do more than that, Moyer says. Well-designed lighting should connect the home and the garden from inside the home, too, by bringing out views from the windows. In the summertime, landscape lighting lets you enjoy the fullness of the season long into the night.
Overlighting the garden is the biggest mistake lighting professionals see in amateur projects. Instead of using one 50-watt bulb shining up from the base of a tree, Pletcher might use three or five 10-watt lamps, combining up-lights and down-lights. The down-lights establish the connection between the object you are lighting and the garden.
Good night-lighting is three-dimensional, Pletcher says: It gives a garden depth and drama. He calls bright lights “glare bombs” that spoil the landscape instead of enhancing it. “You don’t need a lot of light,” he says. “You can keep it very low and it can still be gorgeous.”
In a well-lit garden, you should see the effects, not the fixtures. The lighting complements nature, instead of trying to outshine it. It also works with the home itself: Don’t be surprised if a lighting expert asks about the views from your windows, or takes a look at the intensity of your porch lights. If you want to look out at your garden from the kitchen or bedroom windows, the lights inside and out have to be balanced.
Garden-design perspective
Outdoor lights and beautifully designed gardens naturally go hand in hand. Pretty garden features such as the trunk of a particularly sculptural tree, a fountain or a rugged stone wall can be just as handsome at night as they are during the daytime. To be able to offer that effect, many garden designers have working relationships with lighting professionals and build lighting plans into their garden projects. Here are a few observations from garden designers:
Think beyond spotlights: Proper lighting adds a touch of romance without throwing glaring beams in your neighbors’ windows.
Shining too much light on the front of the house, for example, can look ostentatious, and it can definitely spoil the effect of other night lighting in the garden.
Talk with your garden designer about the features that deserve special night lighting — they’re not always what you expect. Your favorite plant in daylight may not turn out to be the best choice for nighttime lighting.
Take every old flashlight in the house, including those with weak batteries, out into the garden and experiment with night lighting. Take your time, have fun with it, and be alert to striking surprises.
To install outdoor lighting on a budget, take on one area at a time.
Outdoor lighting can also be very simple: Large pillar candles in lanterns throw beautiful light, and strings of twinkling lights and paper lanterns cast a festive glow.
Successful lighting combines smart design, reliable equipment and expert installation — and you can’t get much of any of that in a box of lights from a builder’s supply store, Pletcher says. Kits are one-size-fits-all projects: They are certainly capable of foot-lighting the patio or the front walk, but they do not inspire much creativity, Pletcher says, and they are also not especially durable. The price is right: for $100 or even less, you can experiment with night lighting, but garden designers and lighting experts suggest experimenting with a few flashlights, instead, and calling in the pros.
Start with a consultation. Working with a professional, you can decide what to light, how to light it and what kind of fixtures are appropriate. A big project might cost thousands of dollars, but many professionals will help you with a design you can implement yourself, using high-quality fixtures. Or, instead of taking on a big project all at once, you can work with a designer on small areas, concentrating on the views from your kitchen or bedroom window, and expanding the scope of the job over several years.
Even with a small project, such as lighting a bubbling fountain or a sculptural Japanese maple, the gratification is instant: Just flip a switch, and your garden starts to glow.
