As the holiday season approaches, many homeowners will be pulling out their stringed lights in attempts to create a scene as festive as the elaborately planned winter display windows in New York City. But trimming the border of your house with Christmas lights and wrapping trees up like presents with hundreds of tiny bulbs doesn’t have to be the only way in which you illuminate your property as the winter festivities approach.
Brightening your home and yard with permanently installed landscape lighting is an effective means to bring the warmth of holiday stringed lights to your property year-round. Below, we’ll cover some of the major different types and techniques that professionals utilize to irradiate houses and landscapes.
Types
- Up Lighting: The most widely utilized method for accentuating focal points in landscapes and creating shadows on walls, up lighting – a means of spotlighting an architectural or landscape element from below – lends a dramatic quality.
- Down Lighting: For a more uniform lighting approach that lessens the effect of shadows, down lighting, or illuminating a detail or feature from above, is a premium choice. Also used to highlight specific elements, it does well to make large spaces bright for both safety and security in addition to recreation and relaxation.
Techniques
- Grazing or Washing: Used to amplify the texture of both architectural and plant details, this technique diffuses light over wide vertical elements by placing fixtures 6-8” from the surface, creating a parallel stream of light.
- Spotlighting: As in the theatre, spotlighting is used to call attention to particular landscape elements, utilizing narrowly focused beams to make small sections stand out and capture the viewer’s attention.
- Silhouetting: By placing lights behind a tree, water feature, or other design element, the outline of the form is played up, making it stand out against a backdrop.
- Shadowing: Similar to silhouetting, this technique instead places light in front of plants that are situated near a tall adjacent wall to stimulate dramatic shadows.
- Moonlighting: The most natural form of light, moonlighting creates a subtle glow by putting lights high above gardens in trees, creating a diffused effects through leaves and branches.
If you’d like to set your landscape all aglow for the holidays and the months to follow, consider adding permanent lighting using any of the above methods and techniques to achieve a beautifully illumined property.
At Lehnhoff’s Landscaping, servicing the Baltimore county and surrounding areas in Maryland, we can handle the logistics of lighting by setting up wiring, choosing fixtures, and using our professional eye to determine which elements of your property to highlight, and in what way.
Should you have any questions, please contact Lehnhoff’s Landscaping by calling 443.921.5789 or visit LehnoffsLandscaping.com today!
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