If your Melville, NY, backyard loses its luster after the sun goes down, it might be time to update your landscape lighting. Outdoor lighting can increase safety and enhance your landscape atmosphere, ensuring that your backyard is a favorite destination at night—not just during the day. From pathway lighting to underwater lighting, try some of these outdoor lighting ideas to transform your landscape after dark.
Light Up Your Walkways
You may not think much about your walkways during the day. They provide a route across your yard and help prevent people from trampling the landscape. But without proper lighting, your walkways might not be doing their job at night. Landscape lighting can increase safety in your yard while creating inviting paths to guide guests across your landscape. Path lighting should be evenly spaced, with the lights just far enough apart to draw people forward to the next bright spot. Path lighting is available in a number of attractive styles to complement your landscape design.
Step lights and tread lights highlight your exterior architecture and provide light right where it’s most effective. These small lights are often installed on the wall beside stairs or along the front of stair risers. Strip lighting is another effective and attractive way to light stairs and pathways directly at foot level.
Illuminate an Outdoor Dining Area
Dining outdoors on a warm summer night is one of the many benefits of having a great outdoor dining room. But you don’t want your guests to be guessing where their food is. Pendant lights or string lights will add a beautiful atmosphere for outdoor dining. Or make a statement with a striking chandelier. If your dining area is covered, you don’t have to limit yourself to only weatherproof fixtures.
Moonlighting involves placing lights high up in a nearby tree or structure and aiming them downward, creating the effect of natural moonlight. This can be an effective method for lighting an uncovered dining area. Guests will feel as though they’re dining by the light of the moon.
Create Nighttime Focal Points
Your landscape most likely contains attractive focal points that you enjoy during the day. Landscape lighting can help bring them into focus at night too. With different lighting techniques, our landscaping experts can highlight an attractive tree, interesting structure, or shimmering water feature.
Uplighting highlights your attractive features from below, making them stand out among darker areas of your landscape. Silhouetting places the light source behind the focal point, creating dramatic shadows or striking silhouettes, depending on the direction of the light.
Add Atmosphere with Underwater Lighting
Underwater lighting is one of the most impressive ways to add atmosphere to a nighttime landscape. If you have a pool, pond, or water feature in your backyard, the right landscape lighting can have a magical effect at night.
A pool or pond lit from below creates a soft underwater glow that shimmers and adds depth to dark landscape. Today’s innovative LED lighting systems allow you to create different moods with features such as adjustable colors and brightness.
Water features also offer the opportunity for beautiful reflective light. Strategically placed landscape lighting around the pond or pool can both highlight nearby plants and reflect off the water. Highlighting waterfalls can also make an excellent nighttime focal point while creating a shimmering effect.
