Many years ago our landscape lighting consisted of mainly a light on the front porch or a small lamp post light at the base of our front lawn. The landscape lighting ideas of today not only include our front landscaping but also our backyard gardens. We like to spend more time outdoors so we try to create garden rooms in the backyard for entertaining and relaxing with family, friends, and neighbors.

We do not want to just go out and buy any old landscape lighting fixtures, we need to plan on how we want our homes, gardens, outdoor rooms, and landscaping to look first. Are we going to light up our barbecue areas, pools, trees, flowerbeds, fountains, statuaries, and gardens? Now, what type of lightng do we want to use?  

In coming up with some landscape lighting design we can look at the architectural features of our homes and landscaping. We may want to use some uplighting for an archway or to highlight an arbor. We can use additional submersible lights in our pools or place them in ponds and fountains to highlight the movement of the water. We can silhouette the trees and bushes in our landscaping by placing lights below them and behind them. There are functional lights and fashionable lights. Some low voltage lights are both fashionable and functionable when placed under stairs, bench seating, and handrails; they are meant to be nice to look at and create safety at the same time.  

We can also get some landscape lighting ideas from neighbors and friends. If our houses are well lit durimg the night they are safer and more secure than a house that has no lights at all. By lighting up our driveways, pathways, and steps we can rest assured that accidents will not happen after dark. Motion detector lights are another source of security; these lights will turn on if someone or something walks by. Some lights have photocells that will automatically turn on at dusk and off at dawn; these lights are good even if we are away from home.

We always want our friends and neighbors along with our families to enjoy the landscaping and not the lights; we just want them to enjoy the effects of the lights. We want to have just enough lights for enjoyment and safety. When we start our landscape lighting installation we need to make sure we can conceal the light fixture as best as we can. We can place them behind tree branches, shrubs, or foliage plants. All we want to see is the ambience of the lights and not the fixtures.   

We always want to remember the safety of our family and friends when it comes to our landscape lighting design. The lights should illuminate all pathways, stairways, gates and driveways during the night. Floodlights are a good choice for lighting a deck area while entertaining and tube lighting under the handrails is not only a safety feature but also lightens up the area.   

Most of our ideas will probably come from all the areas in the garden that we are proud of such as tall trees, flower gardens, and unusual plants. Since we already enjoy these areas during the day we also want to relax with them during the night and that is where the landscape lighting design plays a role. Solar landscape lighting is a sensible way to create safety in the garden, but we must place them where they will receive the energy from the sun during the day. Low voltage lighting and rope lighting are a couple of good lighting options. These are just some landscape lighting tips we need to consider when we want our landscape and home safe.

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