Landscape Lighting Installation: Tips and Information

You have beautiful flowers, well-trimmed shrubs, and admirable furniture pieces in your patio decks. Perfect? Well, without landscape lighting, it won’t be. When the sun goes down, all these beauty will just turn into shadows.

But with the proper landscape lighting installation you can turn your garden into a beauty you can marvel at and show off day or night. Installing outdoor light fixtures can enhance the natural beauty of flowers, trees and shrubs. It can also give statues and fountains a dramatic lighting effect.

But outdoor lighting is not only for the aesthetic eye, it also has practical purposes—safety, security, and investment. Outdoor lighting will give you a sense of safety and security, knowing intruders are most likely to avoid well-lighted homes. Accidents like tripping are also prevented. But most importantly, a beautiful garden will give you a relaxing atmosphere after a hard day’s work, not just on weekends—a significant return on your initial garden investment.

The popularity of landscape illumination has been growing significantly because of the availability of affordable low voltage outdoor lights and solar power lights. What’s more is that these are virtually easy to install and safe.

There are many types of landscape lighting fixtures to serve the many different lighting needs in your backyard. With the knowledge of the different techniques, you can spruce up your lifeless, dull looking gardens, and make them the envy of your neighbors.

Here are a few important guidelines to help you determine the types of outdoor lighting you need:

• Try to conceal the light source whenever possible.
• Just highlight the focal points.
• If possible, use timers to turn your lights on and off.
• Never aim lights outside your property.
• Don’t stick with just one lighting technique, be creative!

In order to get the best results, you should know which type of lighting fixture to use. The following are the basic types of landscape lights.

• Mushroom lights have a wide shade, ideal for lighting low decorative pieces, flowers and shrubs.
• Tier lights cast light downward and shields eyes from glare, best used on garden paths and stairs.
• Well lights are buried underground. They shine light upward, ideal for enhancing lush canopies of trees.
• Globe lights have bulbs enclosed in a globe; this lighting fixture gives off light in every direction, ideal for swimming pools.
• Flood lights direct light to a desired location, best used for more decorative lighting techniques.

For more information on using outdoor lighting for your yard and garden, please read this article on landscape lighting tips.

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