Define Your Outdoor Lighting Purpose
Before investing in outdoor lighting, you need to consider what your purposes are for wanting your backyard illuminated. Maybe you would like to set a romantic, soft mood for the evening hours. Perhaps you have a shadowy garden corner or bench that needs to be illuminated for security purposes. You might need to have landscape lighting for a path that leads through your garden in order to mark the boundaries. Maybe you would like to highlight some of your backyard’s features such as a pond or water fountain. How can you design a yard that really stands out? One way to do that is to make your space usable during nighttime hours. Since many individuals like to play or work long after sunset, frequently they don’t have any time for enjoying their backyard until it is the night. When outdoor lighting is added, it immediately transforms your garden into a space that is highly usable.
Make a Sketch of Your Backyard
Draw a sketch of your yard after you have determined your reasons for why you want to add landscape lighting. In your sketch include any existing lights, shrubs, trees, benches, buildings, along with the decorations and vegetation contained in your garden. Each of those items will absorb or reflect light. Estimate how tall each of these objects is, the foliage in particular.
Read More: The Benefits of Outdoor Living Spaces
Determine Where To Place The Landscape Lighting
The reason for your outdoor lighting should match the specific areas in your backyard. Maybe you have a bench on a path that you would like to illuminate by using a pole-type lamp put behind it. You can achieve a soft mood by hiding outdoor lighting underneath shrubs. You might need to short stake lights on the border of a path on either one or both sides. You can enhance water fountains by placing a spotlight on it and place soft lighting around the perimeter of a pond.
Determine The Amount Of Effort You Want To Expand
The type of outdoor lighting that requires the most effort when it comes to installation is 120-volt lighting. For this kind of garden light, the wiring has to be buried 18 inches deep or encased inside of a conduit in order to protect it against water. The electrical components need to be installed by a licensed electrician. Low-voltage landscape lighting that is used in the backyard only needs to have a transformer and receptacle. The 120 bolts that come from the house line is converted by the transformer into 12 volts which can be used for operating the lights. Solar lighting is the easiest kind of landscape lighting to install in your backyard. There are no cords that need to be hidden by this kind of lighting. It needs to be positioned in a way that the lighting fixture photovoltaic cell receives a sufficient amount of light during the daytime in order to enable it to shine during the nighttime.
Determine Your Budget And Then Purchase Your Lighting
-Most Expensive: High-voltage outdoor lighting can cost $100 per light or more
-Information: There will also be an additional labor cost for the electrical contractor to install the wiring.
-Lower Cost: Low-voltage outdoor lighting will cost $30-100 per light
-Information: A DIY person can easily install this kind of lighting.
-Most Inexpensive: Solar lighting
-Information: Given the fact that solar lights rely on an inbuilt photovoltaic device and the sun’s rays to work, they don’t take a lot of money to install or run. The only cost that you will incur is the solar lights’ initial price.
Tip: If you need to light a darkened area of your garden but the solar landscape light won’t receive enough sunlight during the daytime, then you will need to install a solar panel in a high sunlight area and run wires to the solar lights.
Setting Up Your Outdoor Lighting
ball, or statue, then you should consider making use of a couple of landscape lighting fixtures that have low intensity bulbs. Then place them at various distances and angles. One bright
If there is one object in your garden that you would like to highlight such as a fountain, gazing light that is directly shining on an object can create harsh shadows. Outdoor lighting that products soft light spots work well for garden paths. The lights should be spaced at equal distances along your path that you would like to illuminate. Blue tinted lights can give your garden landscape a moonlight-kind of mood. If you would like to give your home some pop get in touch with an outdoor lighting company.