Outdoor lighting can provide your home with a pleasing nighttime look, while also increasing the safety of your family. Lighting your home, however, is a bit more complex than simply throwing a few floodlights around the perimeter. Outdoor lighting done right highlights the beauty of your house, and creates an atmosphere that’s conducive to keeping intruders away – always a plus.
Landscape Lighting illuminates the path and your plants
According to Scott Zide, Chief Operating Officer of Outdoor Living Brands, the franchise division of Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, one of the biggest mistakes homeowners make is employing tried-and-true outdoor floodlights as a first step toward home lighting. Homeowners mistakenly believe this is the best deterrent, but these lights can actually do more harm than good regardless of whether they’re mounted on the house shining out, or staked in the ground, illuminating the house.
“When you have a floodlight shining toward your house and you look outside, all you can see is the glare from the floodlight, which can protect intruders from detection,” said Scott. “If the floodlight is on the eve of the house and shining out, you will be blinded as you approach the house and risk stumbling and falling.”
Another problem with outdoor floodlights is “light pollution.” Floodlights do a great job of illuminating the area they’re in. They also, however, illuminate adjacent areas, making outdoor floodlights bad neighbors. Floodlights also do little to enhance the beauty of a home. “When you are blasting 500-watt flood lights against a home, all of the detail and texture of the home is lost,” said Scott.
So, what’s a safety- and aesthetics-driven homeowner to do?
Using low-voltage outdoor lighting, which are energy-efficient lights, and strategically placing them around the home is the way to go. By using uplighting, the home’s architectural details are emphasized, creating a pleasing display while also making it harder for potential intruders to hide in the shadows. “Uplighting provides security because you are placing lights in the areas where an intruder might hide, such as bushes adjacent to the home,” Scott said. “When you look from inside the home out, you are not blinded by lights, so that you can see if anyone is in the area. Even when looking from across the street, uplighting will create a silhouette of anyone next to your home.”
Carefully placed uplighting has another positive – it enhances the safety of those walking around your home. If you’ve ever visited a home where there wasn’t enough light to see where steps or uneven pavement was, they you understand the importance of sufficient exterior home lighting. Path lighting is another type of light that creates a beautiful look to your home and gives off enough light to safely guide walkers where you want them to go.
Zen Garden Lighting
Outdoor landscape lighting also provides the opportunity to highlight a beautiful area of landscaping – a stunning ornamental tree or bush, for example. Decks and patios are also prime candidates for outdoor lighting. Strategically placing outdoor lights add to safety, security and enjoyment. Scott suggests that homeowners consider adding path lights around the perimeter of patios, which reflect light onto the patio’s surface. “With decks, we suggest lights with a shielded light source underneath the handrails. These lights provide just the right light for conversation and are much more pleasant than typical deck lighting with a bright light shining from the side of a home.”
To begin your lighting adventure, select low-voltage halogen lights of 20-35 watts. These lights are much brighter than incandescent lights of the same wattage. Using smaller lights gives you more options in how you arrange them. Another plus is that these systems will consumer approximately 30 percent less energy than a system using outdoor floodlights.
For Scott, there are two essential principles in applying outdoor lighting.
“Begin by looking for architectural elements of your home and distinctive landscapes to highlight; place lights that will accent these areas, while addressing the issues of safety and outdoor security lighting. Secondly, install lights so that you are never looking directly into a light bulb. Follow these two principles, and outdoor lighting will be an investment that you, and your neighbors, will enjoy for years to come.”
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives (OLP) is a global provider of residential and commercial outdoor lighting systems. Operating through independent dealers around the world, OLP offers lighting components featuring copper, brass and stainless steel, designed for long-life and durable operation. OLP installers offer no-obligation demonstrations in the latest concepts in outdoor lighting to enhance the beauty, safety and security of a home.
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