When unifying the look and feel of your home, a majority of the renovation work will be done in the home’s interior. However, what many people fail to address is how poorly designed exterior lighting can negatively impact your home. Your home’s surrounding landscape is one of the first characteristics noticed by guests, and as such, you want your trees, shrubs, and flowers to be on full display for all to see. However, hastily designed outdoor lighting can be as detrimental to your home’s aesthetics as having no outdoor lighting at all. That’s why, in today’s article, we will be discussing some of the best practices to follow when choosing your landscape lighting.

For more than 55 years, The Light House Gallery has provided residents of Springfield, Branson, and the surrounding areas of Missouri with the highest level of service and the top lighting supplies currently available. As one of the highest rated lighting showrooms in Missouri, we understand that the needs of our customers vary greatly, which is why we carry home lighting products for every type of room imaginable. To learn about some of the easiest ways that you can elevate the aesthetics of your landscape, continue reading more on the subject below.

Know Your Goal

Before beginning your landscape lighting transformation, you should first consider what areas of your landscape that you would like to draw attention to. Light sources are an easy way to highlight unique aspects of your landscape, which is why you should take a mental note of the foliage or water features that you would like to paint with light. You may even find that there are certain areas surrounding your house, such as a patio or gazebo, that would look elegant by adding an additional touch of light to it’s most noticeable features. However, failing to plan which objects of interest you would like to draw attention to could create a jarring end result, causing more harm than good for your home’s surroundings.

Choosing Your Lighting

There is an incredibly vast spectrum of lighting that can be used an endless amount of ways for illuminating your landscape. From path lights and floodlights, to the versatile spot light, every type of light should be taken advantage of and used to its full potential. For example, while you may want to line a walkway leading to a fire pit with path lights, you wouldn’t want to use flood lights to illuminate your landscape’s walkways. Spot lights look incredible when highlighting large trees, shrubs, and other foliage, however they would most likely not be suitable for areas that require a wider degree of lighting. This is why it is important to understand how different types of landscape lighting interact with each other so that you can achieve the most aesthetic outcome possible.

Once you have established which type of light sources will look best around various areas of your home’s landscape, you should begin considering what kind of bulbs you would like to use for lighting the exterior of your house. LED bulbs have grown in popularity significantly over the past few years due to their energy consumption, or lack thereof. LED bulbs are longer lasting and more energy efficient, however, they tend to cost more initially when compared to their halogen and fluorescent counterparts. For this reason, we suggest that you decide which type of bulb is right for you depending on how often you plan to have your landscape’s lighting turned on.

Light Temperatures

After determining your choice of bulb and lighting fixture, you will next be tasked with choosing the proper lighting temperatures for your home’s landscape. There are many Kelvin charts that can be found online that show you the wide spectrum of color temperatures, which can help make your purchasing decision much easier, depending on your lighting needs. For example, if you want to showcase an elegant tree, you may want to choose cooler lighting that possesses blue hues, as blue tends to accentuate green leaves. However, if you are wanting to draw out the earthy tones of a stone water feature, you may be better suited using warm lighting, as warm lighting is effective for making browns and yellows stick out. As you can see, designing your landscape lighting is a science that will require a great deal of work up front to achieve the most desirable outcome possible.

These are just a few tips that can help to make your home’s exterior appear extravagant for friends, family, and all those who pass by your home. If you would like to learn more about our available outdoor lighting, or would like to speak with one of our lighting professionals about which lighting products would look best for your landscape, contact our friendly staff at The Light House Gallery today! As Missouri’s top lighting showroom, we look forward to helping you turn your lighting dreams into reality!