Enhance Your Home With Outdoor Lighting

By Shira Linden, The House Designers Contributing Writer

Add thousands of hours to your outdoor enjoyment, brighten dark areas and make your property appear bigger with landscape lighting. Outdoor lighting also enhances your home’s charm and elegance, adds warmth during the holidays and maximizes curb appeal.

Added safety

Another benefit of landscape lighting involves enhanced safety and security, as burglars will avoid a home that’s lit up at night in favor of a dark house. Crime statistics indicate that lighting is one of the most effective deterrents against burglary that a homeowner can employ.

Achieving the desired effect requires sophistication

Well-placed outdoor lighting can expand the living space when viewed from inside the house and create an ambience that is soothing…even romantic. Most homeowners are unhappy with their outdoor lighting because it is either too bright or too dim. A series of flat, bright lights will not do the job.

To increase the value of your landscape lighting investment and achieve an aesthetically pleasing look, lighting should be subtle, artistic and carefully placed, using three distinct lighting levels and placements.

5 tips to obtain a three-dimensional effect:

1. Use different levels of light to create a focal point. A common mistake is to light everything with equal brightness creating an airport runway effect.

2. Highlight the beautiful accents in your yard. Use up-lighting, shadowing and silhouetting to light trees, statues, gazebos, water fountains and plants.

3. Use indirect lighting. Light up the surrounding trees and the “spill” will illuminate walkways.

4. Think about multiple viewing angles. Make sure there’s no glare and your lighting is aesthetically pleasing from indoors and out.

5. Different plants require different tactics. Pine trees require more light than ash or birch trees.

Shopping for lighting just got easier

Brighten an entry area with a hanging design, add pizzazz to pathways and garden settings, or use post lights to add style to driveways and garage areas. Go Green and save money with outdoor lights that are stylish and energy efficient.

At Lamps Plus®, you can print a full-size version of many of their outdoor light fixtures. This print out gives you a quick and easy tool to judge the size of a fixture in relation to where it is to be placed. Lamps Plus® offers help selecting outdoor lighting and will respond to questions about a specific design.

Choose from outdoor lamps, wall lights, and hanging lights as well as lanterns or pendants in traditional, mission, and contemporary styles at Bellacor®.

Bellacor® organizes their website by category such as post, hanging and holiday lighting, by style, from Victorian to rustic lodge and by finish, brand, shipping time and energy-efficiency so you can zero in on just the type of lighting that will enhance your property.