How to Choose Outdoor Lighting Options for Enjoyment and Safety

Interested in increasing the safety of your home without compromising aesthetic appeal? With outdoor lighting fixtures, you can add security and supplement your home’s natural beauty! From large metal torches and pillar lights to subtle porch lights, the options for outdoor lighting are numerous.

Below we have included some tips and trends that will help you select the outdoor lighting options to best fit your needs:

Utilize Outdoor Lighting to Increase Your Home’s Safety

As a homeowner, you want your house to be safe— a haven from the cold, the dark, and the demands of work. Ill-lit properties encourage falls and intrusions, effectively decreasing your home’s overall level of security. Many lighting solutions can address this problem: a variety of lights can be employed in multiple different ways to illuminate and protect your property. Path lights, post lights, and flood lights can guide the way and light up large areas of your home and property to deter crime and keep you and your loved ones safe.

Choose Outdoor Lighting Options to Complement Your Home’s Natural Beauty

Each and every house is unique, so your home may contain distinctive features that you would like to show off! Outdoor lighting is a great way to highlight certain areas of your home, as lights can be decorative in nature or built to blend in with a currently existing material. If you would like to illuminate your covered porch, you may consider a ceiling fan with an attached lighting fixture.

Swimming pool areas and walkways often feature path lights, as they can be incorporated into a staircase to guide the way. Perhaps you would like to highlight your shrubbery or your home’s facade— and you can certainly do so with customized up lighting. With outdoor lighting, exhibiting the best parts of your home is easy, while at the same time expanding the livable spaces within your property.

Common Trends in Outdoor Lighting Options Today

Outdoor lighting continues to grow in popularity, as more and more homeowners choose to incorporate lighting into their landscape design. Common trends include:

Festoon Lighting

These are strands of lights used to provide illumination to larger outdoor spaces
The light strands can be hung from supports built as a garden structure, as seen in this photo or strung from existing site features which reach overhead. They provide a fun ambiance to outdoor gatherings.

Under-cap Wall Lights

Under cap lights have several purposes.
They provide a light source to bring attention to seat walls and the floors of patios for guests without overwhelming a space with too much light. They also serve to highlight textures and surfaces within an evening setting where they would normally be unseen without the lights.

Up Lighting

These outdoor light fixtures are typically set beneath specimen trees to flood the canopy of branches with light.The light brings attention to the structure of a tree from spring to winter – something often unnoticed but frequently beautiful.

Many of the trees we use are known for their distinct “habit” or structure and they are used in our designs for what their form and habit bring to a garden.

Path Lights

While all outdoor light fixtures provide aesthetic appeal to a garden, path lights may be the most functional. They are used to highlight areas where people are expected–invited — to walk during the evenings.

Path lights illuminate the way, its textures, borders and direction – as well as provide a sense of welcome. Path lights provide a sense of security to visiting guests where walkways are unfamiliar. Walkways used frequently at night, generally closer to the home or patio, should be illuminated well so that everyone is comfortable reaching their destination in all kinds of weather.

While they can be used as a string, one path light after another, this often gives the walkway the look of an airport runway. To avoid this effect, we use path lights at important points along the path, places where the path changes direction or where a traveler must be made aware of a step in the path.

Use other fixtures to illuminate points of interest along the path. The use of small uplights on interesting shrubs, and flood lights illuminating architectural features of the home combined will cast ambient light on areas of the walkway not directly covered by the path lights.

We use different fixtures for different purposes. A garden is multi-dimensional, and a lighting system should be as well. Whether you are seeking to prevent accidents, accentuate a certain feature of your home, or increase your property’s value, installing outdoor lighting can ensure that your home will increase in safety, functionality, and curb appeal.

Burkholder Designs Excellent Customized Outdoor Lighting Combinations to Meet Your Needs

Burkholder specializes in outdoor lighting design. Whether you just want to add beauty to your evening landscape, make outdoor space usable for nighttime, or you want to make sure that your home is more secure, we will design and install the perfect combination of lights for your home. Contact us today for a consultation!