How important is lighting in a landscape? Lighting is a crucial and very often misunderstood component of a successful landscape. Low voltage light fixtures allow you to continue to enjoy your landscape after dark without creating harshness.
Lighting is one of the most important features in a landscape, and people overlook that all the time. I only say that because it would be silly to say that it is the most important thing. I think all the components together are important, but the lighting is very critical, because in many parts of the country you only get a few hours of light for six months of the year. Do you stop living once it gets dark? Of course not! Lighting allows you to enjoy your landscape even after dark. There is also aesthetics and safety that function and all can be taken together.
Unfortunately, people are told inappropriately to light their homes for safety and feel that they have to spotlight. Okay, that goes on a sensor. So then your friends and family come in and feel like a blinded deer because you cannot see when the spotlight comes on. Soft lighting, on the other hand, gives you visibility without blinding your guests. Harsh lighting can draw a lot of bugs. So not only does it blind you when you come up, it's also attracting lots of bugs, so it is really inappropriate lighting.
Post lights are basically the homeowner's version of what used to be traditional street lighting. We did have gas lamps and that kind of thing at the turn of the century. If you think about a traditional gas lamp, if you went to Williamsburg, Virginia or some place like that, those gas lamps are not six feet tall, they are twelve feet tall. They are above your line of sight. They're not putting out the equivalent of a 50- or 70-watt light bulb, they're putting out the equivalent of a 25- or 40-watt light bulb. They give soft lighting and moon lighting where you can see somebody's face and expression, but you are not going to read by it. We put these flood lights on the front of our house and we have 75-watt light bulbs- these post lights are standing at six feet high. They're right in our line of sight. They blind you. So, you cannot use common light fixtures for landscape lighting. You can use conches on the front of your house and around doors or tone down your lighting by using 50- or 25-watt light bulbs. They would be much more effective and they will not blind you and you will be much more comfortable.
Uplighting is really a great use of lighting because when you light from the ground up into a tree, you can create shadows on the tree itself or shadows on your home or architecture. Instead of lining your driveway with post lights, you could line your driveway with trees that are uplit to create an alley of trees and that would give you a very elegant look. A lot of people light their house with spotlights that shine out from the lawn back to the house and then when you look out from inside your dining room or your family room, you are sitting and looking out trying to enjoy the landscape, but you are blinded by the light. All it does is light your house up, it does not allow you to see out. So if landscape lighting is done properly, it is really exciting.
There are actually a lot of decent books on light. I still stress that if you hire somebody, it is going to be done quicker and you will get more instant gratification. The beauty of your landscape is that it can be a constantly evolving process where you can make mistakes and fix them. You can take out a plant, or you can add a plant. You can add lights and you can move lights. Depending on the kind of lighting you like, you can do low-voltage lighting or line voltage lighting. There are differences and there are advantages and disadvantages to either one of those things. First, many landscapers and homeowners put in low-voltage lighting because they can do it themselves. The problem is that if you do it yourself and you don't know exactly what you're doing, then you end up with these runway effects.
Landscape lighting doesn't have to be expensive. You can do amazing things with landscape lights for about $70. Just don't put them in a line. They're just not going to work. There are so many different kinds of lighting options, so lighting really is critical. We do lighting on almost every landscaping project we have. Actually, I should say that every project we do has lighting in it. So, I would say yes, it is really important. When you have lighting around your house like some typical post lighting or a spotlight, everything beyond what that covers, everything beyond the envelope that will cover it is now even darker. So, now you create a lot more mystery or security issues further out. But if you were to light up the periphery of your property by either lighting up some natural trees or doing some reflective lighting off your house, you can position light to either reflect off palms or reflect off tree lines that are neighboring or reflect off of your home and that casts light that bounces outward. There are a lot of different things you can do with light, so lighting is really essential in a landscape. Lighting is probably one of the least used and most important and the most often improperly done landscape details.
