When night falls, you want to keep the joy of being in your outdoor living space alive and this can be done with proper landscape lighting. You can choose between drama, serenity, or both as you decide the feeling of the night. Here are our outdoor lighting ideas for pool decks in Northbrook and Lake Forest, IL areas.
Serenity
Nothing evokes serenity like the gentle light over your outdoor pool area. This can be accomplished with lights just above ground level. Lights should be aimed at the ground to ensure that there is never a harsh glare going into someone’s eyes. The surface of your pool deck area will be forever changed for the better by outdoor lighting designed to invoke peacefulness. Likewise, lights can be placed just above the surface of the water to make the whole pool feel peaceful yet vibrantly alive.
Drama
On the other hand, who doesn’t want a little excitement when it’s time for a pool party? By placing submersible lights inside your pool, it will let light dance above the water by interacting with the reflections and swimmers. The more activity in the swimming pool at night, the more the light will shimmer and dance above the water, offering plenty of visual attraction while maintaining the magic of the night.
Adding different color light bulbs and timer switches to the submersible lighting system will give you plenty of design choices as you create a different experience and play on the drama even more.
Why Not Both?
By having the ability to choose between serene and dramatic lighting options, you can control the mood at the flip of a switch. Strategically installing both lighting systems would only enhance the adaptability of the outdoor living area. Say you want to ramp up the energy of a pool party, so you opt for the dramatic lighting system as the sun goes down. Then, when the party has started to mellow, you could switch over to the serene lighting system to encourage a more peaceful mood to continue more quiet conversation as you and your friends create fantastic memories.
Safety and Security
Illuminating a pool deck with proper lighting systems is essential for everyone’s safety. Being unaware of the state of a pool deck could cause injury. Both not enough light and too much light could be dangerous for a pool deck. Keep the eyes adjusted well by having controls for various levels of brightness according to the ambient light outside. Since we all want to share in the festivities of summer, we should all do so safely.
Structure Lighting
Lights high above ground can be just as essential to the nighttime outdoor pool experience as others. That’s why it’s important to light gazebos, pavilions, or any vertical structures to add texture and ambience to the viewing area. Use string lights to hang between vertical structures and place them along lines inside and outside the structures as well to give a much more festive experience.
If something is worth highlighting like a statue, trees, cliff or rock outcropping, shine a spotlight at that object to amplify the feeling even more. This process is called uplighting and it involves placing a light directly below a tall object, giving it much more depth and drama at night. Likewise, downlighting is pointing lights downward to give more definition to the textures of objects. It’s good to employ both strategies when designing light surfaces and this way, you can guarantee you and your guests will always be impressed.
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