Landscape Lighting: 2022 Trends Explained
Landscape lighting is a great way to upgrade your home’s outdoor aesthetics. For starters, nighttime lighting provides a more dramatic aesthetic of your home. It showcases the lines on your home and your yard. It also provides other benefits such as being a safety feature for difficult walkways, and allows overall nighttime visibility of your property for security purposes. What you’ll find online is overwhelming amounts of information about landscape lighting products and trends. Sifting through this information to determine what you want or need is a challenge. This blog should help you create the right questions, while providing some peace of mind when making decisions.
Understanding Landscape Lighting Trends
Functionality vs. Aesthetics
All landscape lighting possibilities have a purpose, which is to highlight specific areas of your home or yard. It’s important to know the functionality needed along with end results so that the proper lighting fixtures or materials are used. Every light fixture could have a different shape or wattage to highlight specific areas. This is why it’s important to understand functionality so that the proper fixture can highlight the aesthetic of your home or yard. For instance, flood lights are used for functionality of security. These lights have higher wattage and sometimes a wider bulb to highlight larger areas. Spotlights are great for highlighting specific areas like trees or rooflines because wattage and fixture placement are placed to highlight aesthetic features of your home or yard. Understand your home and yard functionality needs first, because the proper lighting fixture will showcase the aesthetic of your home or yard organically.
Solar vs. LED
Landscape solar lighting has become more of a trend because of benefits like brighter light and longer lasting light. This all depends on how much light your panels receive during the day. Usually 8-10 hours of direct sunlight is required. Determine where your yard receives the most sunlight year round. This will drive your decision if solar is right for you. If you live in a partly cloudy area, consider LED landscape lighting instead. LED landscape lighting is making a comeback. They are easier to install as they come packaged as a kit. You won’t have to worry about the number of sunlight hours to make your landscape lighting shine brighter.
Hardscape Lighting
Hardscape lighting is a great way to highlight areas that you use most at night. They provide a low light glow providing an ambiance that is elegant and relaxing. This lighting technique is great to showcase textures such as stone on patios, fences, driveways or structures. Hardscape lighting provides a glow creating shadows and highlights contrasting colors of a particular area. These fixtures are installed on the hard surface that needs to be highlighted or in the ground to showcase pool decks, pathways, or driveways. Always look at specifications as to whether they are low voltage. This may save you some money in the long run.
Wall Landscape Lighting
Outdoor wall lighting is great for fences, driveways and large spaces outside of your home. These lights are usually seen on larger homes with side garages or windows with enough wall space in between them. Wall lights typically have light at the top and bottom of the fixture to showcase the roofline and textures of the home. This provides a more streamlined and luxurious curbside appeal. Additionally, wall lighting can provide security as it provides a wider range of light. Always ask about wattage and light range. This determines which fixture and wattage are needed to provide the functionality or aesthetic needed.
Pool Cage/ Lanai Cage Lighting
Pool and lanai lighting are installed on the cage itself. Most pool cage lighting is LED and is installed to the metal part of the cage. Majority of the lighting options are weather and sun fading resistant but it’s always best to ask if you don’t know. All lighting fixtures come in different sizes along with multiple options for adjustment and even changing color lights. Most kits provide areas of the lanai that can be programmed to turn on and off at specific times of the day. There are a lot of options, but decisions should be made by knowing how much light you want and what sections need to be showcased.
As I mentioned before, it’s easy to get bogged down reading multiple sites about landscape lighting. By the time you’re done reading all the information, you’re more confused than ever. Instead, just remember one thing, understand what you need for functionality. Do you need landscape lighting for safety, security, or just aesthetics? Answering this question first will guide you through the decision making process. Also, landscape lighting trends last a lot longer than you think. You’ll just want to ensure that fixture colors are the same on the ground and above ground. I hope this helps with choosing the perfect landscape lighting for you.
