How To Light Your Yard Beautifully

Landscaping is an important part of your house's curb appeal. It can guide the eyes across your yard and to your house or just generally complement your home's façade. However, when the sun goes down, your landscape can disappear. Continue to promote the curb appeal of your house and yard with beautiful landscape lighting.

Light your Paths

Perhaps the most important landscape lighting in your yard highlights your path. However, you don't want to just shine a spotlight on the path. Not only is that not the most attractive solution, it can create shadows. Instead, utilize low-light fixtures to guide your guests. Look for non-glaring lights, and aim them down. Stagger their placement so you don't transform your path into a runway.

Get Inspired by the Moon

Naturally the moon and stars provide light at night. Use their easy glow as inspiration for your landscape lighting. Better Homes and Gardens suggests using a variety of low-light sources for illumination. For example, have lights mounted in trees aimed both up and down to give the effect of the moon glowing through the branches.

Uplight Beauty in your Yard

Along those lines, accent lighting can also add drama to your yard. Uplights, or lights installed low and aimed up, can make items appear in a spotlight. Utilize uplights to highlight a tree, statue or even architectural feature in your yard. Only use this kind of lighting for one or two structures – utilize more ambient glowing for most items in your yard.

Create Silhouettes

One type of ambient lighting that adds beauty to your night landscape is silhouetting. With this type of lighting, contractors place a spread light between plants, fountains, sculptures or other items that are side by side. As the name suggests, the light spreads and creates a black silhouette. The effect is especially charming when the lights are placed to create the silhouette against a wall.

Use Shadows for Effect

Shadow lighting is very similar to silhouetting. With shadow lighting, contractors place a light low and aim it up. The goal isn't to showcase the structure, as with uplighting. Instead, they aim the light to create shadows. This is charming with trees or large plants because the breeze can affect the play of shadows across the object. Another version of this is called grazing. With grazing, the contractors use small spread lights or rope lights for a low structure such as a flower bed. These low lights capture the delicate shadows of the plants.

Design your landscape lighting to highlight the beauty of your yard and home. You can discover more on this topic by contacting a professional landscape lighting specialist.

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