Four Styles of Outdoor Landscape Lights That Can Add to Your Property Value
Installing garden lights are one of the simplest ways that you can improve the look, feel, and usefulness of your home. When most people think of exterior lighting, they just think of a few spotlights that cast light on the yard and driveway so that you can have light to not trip on your way to the door. However when used correctly, outdoor lights don’t just provide safety, they also provide your property with a unique look and feel that will only show itself at night. It improves the visual appeal of your property, which in turn then improves your property value. The best part is that if you use solar garden lights, you don’t need to invest a lot of time or effort to install them or call a professional electrician. Whatever you require to use your garden lights for, there are four basic lighting styles that you can utilize to cast some much needed light on your property.
Style #1 – Use Landscape Lighting to Draw Attention
If you wish to draw attention to an object in particular in your yard or garden, feature lighting is perfect for the situation. Feature lighting fixtures focus light on an object, lighting it up brilliantly for all to see. This can be an ancient tree full of knots that casts shadows when lit up, your most prized plants, or nearly any other object in your yard.
Feature lighting is most commonly done with the use of spotlights mounted on a wall or a stake in the ground. The effect can also be obtained with the use of Up lights. Up lights are small lights that are positioned on the ground that cast their light straight upwards, leading to their name.
Landscape Lighting Style #2 –Ambient Lighting
If instead of drawing attention to something you would like to set a mood in your garden, ambient lighting is an excellent option. Ambient lighting is much dimmer than floodlights, which brighten up entire areas, and can make use of several different styles of lamps and colored bulbs to set a certain mood. Want to make your deck out back feel like a deck overlooking the ocean? Install a few Tiki torches and turn on some Jimmy Buffet music. Would you prefer a more romantic feel to your patio? Install some lower voltage colored light bulbs. Or would you instead enjoy taking a walk through your garden under the light of a full moon every single night? Install some moon light bulbs in your trees to filter light down below.
The different atmospheres that you can choose from to set in your garden with ambient lighting are countless, as are the ways to achieve them. It can be through the installation of colored bulbs, globe lights, or even lanterns. Just ensure that all your lights match up or you may end up setting conflicting moods!
Lighting Style #3 – Use Floodlights for Some Serious Light
Floodlights are named so because they flood the area around them with a bright light. Although this may not be as subtle or sexy as the different designing styles, it does have many good uses and is easy to set up. They are especially great for use in yards to keep it bright so that you and your children can keep playing outside after dark or you can find that zany chocolate lab that will never listen to your calls to come inside after you let it outside. But these lights should usually just be limited to yards. You can also place them in places like driveways so that you can work on your car or other such projects late into the night.
The use of a lot of floodlights definitely won’t win you any designing awards, but what it lacks in style it makes up for in functionality.
Landscape Lighting Style #4 – Security Lighting
Security lighting doesn’t add very much in the way of functionality or beauty to your land, but it can be helpful in stopping you from getting robbed, which will certainly keep more cash in your pocket. While this definitely isn’t a foolproof method to keep your home safe from robbers, it will help. Criminals usually go after easy targets, so if they see that there’s going to be attention drawn to them if they rob your home, which will happen when really bright lights keep turning on, they will most likely turn around and go to another target. While criminals are usually the main target for security lighting, it can also be utilized in your garden to keep out undesired creatures such as deer and rodents. Unless they are very tamed by living in an urban environment, animals will usually run and hide when someone shines a light at them, keeping your precious plants safe.
Security lighting is generally done with a highly powered light, like those used for floodlights and feature lights attached to a motion sensor.
By installing landscape lights on your property and appropriately using one or more of these different lighting styles you can make your home more visually appealing, valuable, useful, and even safer to live in. Given the benefits and the relatively low cost of having them installed, there’s no reason you shouldn’t look into installing outdoor lights.
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