Outdoor lighting, also known as landscape lighting, has known an unexpected boost in the last ten years. This is no longer solely the burden if the local administrations and city halls. Domestic users do approach outdoor lighting and enhance the vista of the domestic residences with various light sources. And no, we don't mean solely Christmas lights!

Outdoor lighting is not only used to create and deliver an emotional aura around a home, or in a private garden, but also for safety and orientation purposes. Customers choose their lighting sources carefully and place them in strategic places to insure safety and to provide for an aesthetic landscape lighting scenario. The light sources for outdoor use should not be too bright, yet bright enough to provide enough light along walkways and prevent trespassing. Bright lights need higher levels of electricity, therefore consume more and increase energy costs. Solar garden lamps are there to solve such difficulties. However, the problem with such lamps is that most of them are of inferior quality or the solar batteries are not strong enough to last the whole night, especially not in winter when they don't even charge enough.

There are some outdoor lighting techniques that might help you create the optimal effects using traditional energy sources.

Spot lighting may be used to highlight statues or central architectural elements. As spots emanate pretty powerful light beams, you should always try to position them higher than the human eyes or in places where people don't usually walk or look directly.

Another method to highlight interesting shapes is called in lighting design terms "shadowing". This is achieved by placing a light spot directly in front of the element you want to create an interesting effect for and point the light towards a vertical surface, to form a shadow.

Wherever you have stairs you might want to employ a technique called step lighting. For this purpose LED fixtures powered by solar cells are ideal, as you don't need too much light on each step, but you need a "contour", a light accent or a light path.

Walkway lighting is pretty important to define landscape pathways and add safety. Solar garden lamps are pretty convenient for this purpose too, but if you prefer having your path lights on for a longer time, you could opt for traditional lamps. Although they consume more electricity and increase energy costs, they are brighter and provide for more safety.

If you have a residence with exclusive architectural traits, you might want to accentuate its beauty with uplighters. The technique is not new and it's already used to enhance many corporate and official buildings.

Underwater illumination is great for artesian fountains, pools and ponds, but underwater lights are generally expensive and difficult to install.

No matter what you choose, just remember that each light should be used carefully to enhance the natural beauty of the scenery and not to add undesired glance and glare. Just stay away from too much if you don't want to fall in the kitsch trap!