How to Use Landscape Lighting for Safety, Security, and Beauty

One major element of quality landscape is the outdoor lighting. Not only is landscape lighting a way to enhance the beauty of your home, it provides safety and security as well. To be effective, landscape lighting must be both integrated with the design of the home and planned well for it to work properly.

Landscape Lighting Has Come of Age

A couple of decades ago, landscape lighting was very basic. Choices for most consumers were cheap plastic or painted metal fixtures. However, now there are dozens of manufacturers who produce landscape lighting fixtures made out of all kinds of materials such as brass, bronze, copper, and cast aluminum. You can even find non-metallic and powder coat metal fixtures.

Creating Quality Lighting Landscape

Quality landscape lighting is not something you will find in an inexpensive lighting kit found at many home improvement stores. These inexpensive kits are okay if your a do it yourselfer and looking for temporary landscape lighting. However, commercial quality landscape lighting fixtures that are installed by a professional will not only enhance the beauty, safety, and security of your home, they will also last for years.

The first step in creating quality lighting is to examine your landscape and decide where you need illumination. Patio covers, pathways, walls, steps, trees, plants, waterfalls, sculptures, and barbeques are the more common places landscape lighting is used. Will you need high-voltage or low-voltage or a combination of both?

Once you have decided what areas need to have landscape lighting, you need to decide what type of fixtures to install. It is always important in landscape lighting to maximize the ambiance while hiding the actual source of the light as much as possible. Play around with lighting positions to create special effects. Place lights high in trees point down to create a moonlight effect. Landscape lighting shown through plants can create interesting shadows on walls. Pathway lighting can be used to light up steps as well as illuminate colorful flowers.

Power, Cabling and Controlling Your Landscape Lighting

Other considerations that need to be addressed by a professional lighting landscaper are how to setup the transformer and how the cable feeds to the fixtures will be run. Where the transformers are placed, what size is needed and what size wire are all things that need consideration when planning a landscape lighting project. Discuss with your landscape lighting professional about the different options for controlling your fixtures. Your landscape lighting can be controlled by a time-clock-controller, a photo-cell controller, a remote-controller, or you can manually control them by switches. For security, some landscape lighting should be controlled by motion sensors.