Should you see the light source, the light, or the effect?

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There are so many places to shop for outdoor lighting fixtures - online, home improvement stores, garden stores, etc. You will find a full range of fixtures from beautiful to functional and likely everything in between. So, how do you decide? What's most important - the light source, the light, or the effect?

Take a look at this gorgeous house. If you focus on the home itself, it's beautiful. But if you take a look at the landscaping that greets you as you enter the yard, you are struck by the clamshell lights that just don't match the grandeur of the home nor the elegant landscaping. 

At night, they may or may not fade into the landscaping to illuminate the front wall but during the day, they are more of an eyesore.

With good landscape lighting, your goal should be to see the effect of the lighting. Many of your fixtures will be hidden in landscaping - for example - in your hedges that line your home's architectural facade. These fixtures you use there are most likely well lights. But, the challenge becomes when the lights need to be placed in plain sight so they can accomplish other lighting objectives such as safety lighting and/or security lighting. There are other times when lights will need to be placed in limited sight view such as when the landscaping has a higher canopy and when landscaping is not in bloom.

Take a look at this picture. You will need to look closely to find the copper fixture that sits within the landscaping bed.

The flood light in this picture is solid copper so it blends very nicely into this pruned and un-bloomed landscaping. Unless you are looking for this fixture, you would not see it. The nice thing about copper outdoor lighting fixtures is that they patina beautifully. When the fixtures patina, they continue to blend into landscaping and compliment your walkways, pathways, and walls beautifully.

The flood light used to illuminate the back wall of this property is a mini soft adjustable directional copper flood light. Made of solid copper with a brass elbow, this flood light is very versatile. The light source can be adjusted to direct either up or down. It's ideal for uplighting a wall but it's also perfect for a roofline, arbor or archway. The lighting effect is broad in this light and the light color is a pure white light. With the broad throw of this fixture, the light washes a longer horizontal span. Therefore, fewer fixtures are needed to light up a long wall as seen in this application. This brick wall runs the entire length of this very large property. The owners desire was a gentle wash of the wall so guests could see all the way across the very long yard to the landscaped wall. They did not want uplights that made "spikes" of light where the fixture was placed. They wanted a wonderful wash of light across the entire wall.

You have to look closely at this picture to see 2 light fixtures and this picture was taken standing in the bed of pine straw.

So, what's most important when designing your outdoor lighting and selecting fixtures is the effect that the lighting has in the evening.

Please read the next article about viewing, or rather getting blinded, by the light of outdoor lighting in the evening.

 Click to see more flood lights at Outdoorlights.com. Click here to contact the local Outdoor Lighting Perspectives office for a free demo in your area.

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It takes a lighting design professional to light up Newport on Bellevue

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When Deron Ellis of Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Rhode Island was first contacted to design the outdoor lighting for a gorgeous stately Victorian on historic Bellevue Avenue in Newport, he was really looking forward to the fun design challenges that come with lighting the nooks and crannies of the Victorian architecture in the home.

Good architectural lighting will light the structure from top-to-bottom and left-to-right. Great architectural lighting will accent the wonderful architectural details to add the third dimension of the lighting - depth and texture.

After he visited the home and discussed the customer's objectives, he realized that the back of the home had tremendous opportunities for creative lighting design as well.

One of the hallmark features of the back yard living space is this beautiful decorative wall.

The wall has posts, decorative cut-outs, and the marvelous texture and rich color of red brick. The wall is also a defining structure in terms of making the open patio an outdoor room.

Deron knew that lighting on this wall would set the scene for a beautiful outdoor living area environment. Here is a close-up of the wall.

You can see That the lights are actually flush with the level of the patio. A concrete cutting company came in and core drilled 6" holes through the bluestone patio. Then recessed well lights with a brass and glass cover were used to create this flush installation.

The next area illuminate on the back grounds was the path from the outdoor patio/living area down to the pool. For this, he used copper path lights. Here's why. The copper lights are a domed path light with a fixture made of solid copper. The dome allows the light fixture to throw a very soft, romantic and gentle light but enough light to safely light the path. Because the fixture is copper, it patinas over time thus blending into the landscaping it adorns.

Here is a close-up of the path lighting using the copper domed path lights.

In this next picture, you can see how the placement and spacing of the path lights works well to guide the path and to create a wonderful balanced look from the pool area.

Below you will see a picture of the finished architectural lighting design for the front of this home.

You will notice that the home is very gently illuminated which is the goal in strong outdoor lighting design. You want to be able to see really see the entire facade of the home but you don't want to feel like there are spotlights on the house. You want to gently wash the facade.

Here is a close-up of the front of the house.

Here you can see both the details of the lighting as well as how some of those effects were achieved. Notice the dormer on the second level and how the light washes the dormer all the way up to the tip. If you look below the dormer on the roof line directly below, you will see there are lighting fixtures attached to the room.On this home, there is the lower roof line where the fixtures are attached. This roof line interferes with the lights that sit at the base of the house to light the architectural structure. So, a good lighting designer will install lights above those areas in order to reach not only the unique details but to light the various elevations.

This is generally the only way you will be able to achieve lighting above areas of protrusion.

At the end of the day, lighting design is great but the only thing that really matters is how happy the customer is. Here is what the customer had to say.

"It is a testament to your lighting scheme that the place that I most wanted to relax after returning from living amongst the gardens and palaces of Umbria & Venice was in the midst of your handiwork in my own backyard."  Bill V.

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If the light blinds you, then it's incorrectly placed or angled

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Last night we were walking to the fireworks in town. This big old house on a corner right near the center of town has the most amazing old magnolia tree. It's huge. Magnolia blooms are fascinating to watch.

They start out as this fascinating bud with this gorgeous purple color and pineapple-shaped bud, to a perfectly goblet-shaped early bloom to a flower with these bright white perfect petals in a matter of days. And then so quickly after, the petals whither to brown and it's gone. But at any time, looking at a mature magnolia tree, you can see buds in every part of this blooming process.

Magnolia trees are unlike so many other flowering trees that seem to bloom all at once and then fade. Magnolia trees, when flowering, seem to constantly have crops of buds in various stages of bloom.
This tree in town is huge. I can stand and count the various blooms for a long time. So when we walked by the tree, I looked over at my favorite tree only to be blinded by what seemed a spotlight.

The well intended tree lighting was pointed toward the street, thus blinding the passers-by at night. To make it worse, this was also blinding to motorists. The reason for tree lighting is to be able to enjoy the grandeur of the trunk as well as a gentle wash of lighting on the underside of the canopy. But, if the light is sitting far from the trunk and pointed at about a 90 - 130 degree angle, the purpose will be defeated. Even worse, it can be blinding to the home's residents and to motorists.
As I went to take a picture of this light, I noticed a similarly poorly adjusted light.
This particular light was installed to illuminate the driveway. Unfortunately, it was also sitting at less than a 90-degree angle causing an utterly blinding light to the owners who used the driveway leaving the home.
The next problem with this approach to driveway lighting was they also used the wrong fixture. With this particular fixture, they were not going to be able to accomplish the objective of driveway lighting. This particular fixture - the bullet light - is designed to uplight. It serves the purpose of things like small sign lighting. It needs to have a destination for the light source and that destination cannot be in the eyes of people
.
In order to illuminate a drive or path, you need a fixture where the light source not only casts a down shadow, but that shadow also needs to be protected by a dome hood to avoid light blinding.

As you can see in this picture, a path light with a covered dome adequately illuminates the path for walking or driving. At the same time, there is no blinding.


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