It’s always around this time of the year that I appreciate the design elements of our outdoor lighting scheme. The days are getting shorter and I find that I am turning on our outdoor lights slightly earlier each day. We have both lights for safety and outdoor party lights. The result of decent outdoor lighting is that we can still enjoy our outdoor space into late August and September.
During the earlier summer months my backyard was a functional and safe place to socialize and relax without resorting to outdoor lights. Where I live the sun can still be shining until 9.30pm. In fact, during the month of June the skies became dark and the backyard become too dark to be safe right around the time I wanted some BBQ guests to leave so it worked out perfectly.
We started to create our outdoor lighting scheme about 5 years ago. My spouse and I were charmed by the simplicity and beautiful effect or the outdoor lighting fixtures of a French restaurant in our town. Since that time we have experimented with many different variations of led outdoor lighting designs. Our scheme is a work in progress and it gets tweaked each year. Some years we use a lot of string lights while in other years we use spot lights and twinkly lights. We generally tend to stick to white lights although we sometimes use the odd colored spotlight to great success.
The first thing you need to consider when developing an outdoor lighting scheme is safety. The pathways and the doorways need to be properly illuminated in order to prevent any unexpected stumbles. Properly lit entrance ways including any back alleys that might border your property also increase your level of personal safety. A good rule of thumb is to have at least 60-80 watts of light at every outside door, set of outside steps, or any other place that you might want to go to at night is alleys or garbage bin areas.
Once you have taken care of the safety aspects of led exterior lighting you can concentrate on creating mood or an ambiance. I personally prefer a softer type of lighting. I like to make things light enough so I can see where I’m walking and I can easily make out my guests and food but dark enough that some exterior light fixtures can also be appreciated. One of my favorite lighting techniques is using rope lighting or string lighting on the trees at the back of my yard. This type of lighting provides almost no illumination but provides a very pretty whimsical effect.
Outdoor lighting can transform the average plain backyard into an extraordinary and beautiful backyard. It is cheap and easy to change your outdoor living space into something beautiful. The bonus of these schemes is that if they don’t work as you wish, you can simply redesign. Think about the safety issues first. Once you have accommodated all issues related to safety you can then play with different outside light fixtures design please visit us.