One landscape design decision can make all the difference in beauty in your landscape above all the others: landscape lighting. Good illumination is absolutely essential for safety reasons, but it can really make or break the appeal of your nighttime landscape as well. Getting creative with your lighting design will make an incredible difference in both the front yard and the backyard. Here are three creative ways outdoor lighting can enhance your Buffalo Grove, IL landscape.
But first, abandon the flood light. One of the most common lighting techniques in residential landscapes is actually very inefficient and can even work against the qualities of the home and landscape. The overhead flood light on the side of a house may illuminate a large space, but it only does so by using a large amount of electricity, blinding anyone who looks at it, and creating harsh shadows that obscure hazards. There are many better lighting strategies out there, so it’s best to abandon the flood light.
Light the Walking Areas
The most important lighting strategy is about ensuring that walking areas are sufficiently illuminated. Place walkway lights along your walkways, as well as the perimeter of your patio and pool deck. If people walk up your driveway, a line of low-lying walkway lights will create a welcoming ambience. Walkway lights are low to the ground, almost eliminating the interruptions of shadows and glares. These low-lying lights will also use much less electricity to do a better job of illuminating the walking surface. You can even incorporate walkway lights within masonry structures such as a retaining wall or raised masonry planters.
Creating Focal Points
In your outdoor living space, you’ll want to draw the eyes to the spaces that matter. These will be the areas where people can gather and share food or drink. The focal points in your outdoor living space include outdoor shelter structures like pavilions or pergolas; your outdoor kitchen; and water features. Using an uplighting or downlighting technique will not only draw attention to these features to make them brightly prominent in your landscape and help create a great sense of depth perception; they will also highlight the more rustic textures to create a visually dynamic space.
The inclusion of fire in your outdoor lighting scheme will be a great benefit to your outdoor lifestyle. Whether you include a fire pit, a fire table, or an outdoor fireplace in the design of your gathering areas, fire features will always create a substantial amount of ambient light in addition to warmth. Instead of working against the fire light, work with it. Subtle lighting at the base or higher on the fire feature will not draw your attention away from the fire when it’s lit; but will offer enough lighting for safety and ambience once the fire is extinguished.
Creating Dimension with Spotlights, Silhouetting, and Washing
Most backyards have one feature that deserves to be in the spotlight after dark. Perhaps it’s a gnarled old rough-barked tree; or a statue; or a water feature; or a masonry retaining wall. You can use spotlights in various ways to draw the eye to them. Spotlights bring attention to the shape; silhouetting casts dramatic shadows on surfaces behind the feature; and washing bathes vertical features in a softer light that then bounces onto the surrounding space - a more subtle way to highlight a feature while adding ambient light.
