Lighting

Using lighting in the landscape

What are the objectives of lighting in the garden?

Generally we are either lighting for function / safety or for aesthetics. The addition of lighting to a landscape can be very beneficial to the home owners. Often in the winter it is dark when we leave the house and dark again before we get home. Well done lighting allows us to appreciate and feel connected to our landscape throughout this time.

Lighting for Safety

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  • Access - Coming home at night we want to be able to move from the car or the footpath to the front door easily. Path lights and wall lights can be used to make it easy to get in hastily with your shopping bags.

  • Staircases - These can be trip hazards. The last thing you want late at night when you take something out to the bins is to have to negotiate a staircase in the dark. These lights can be shone across the stair treads individually, be mounted underneath the stair treads as strip lights or a flood light can be used from above.

  • Carparks - On commercial projects car parks can be scary spaces to be without adequate lighting.

There are two fundamental points to understand about outdoor lighting. The first is that we actually require much less light in outdoor living situations tha...

Lighting for Aesthetics

Structures

  • Focal Points - We can use lights to lead the eye to a focal point in a landscape in the evening.

  • Features and sculptures - Light can pull focus to features and sculptures so that you can enjoy them from inside in the evening.

  • Walls and walling - Wall lights can be used to pull focus to doorways, light up plants surrounding it and sometimes to bring focus to the walling if the materials are nice enough to show off.

FX Luminaire presents a Landscape Lighting Design training video about Lighting Trees. Meet Landscape Design professionals from all over the country as they ...

FX Luminaire presents a Landscape Lighting Design training video about Lighting Specialty Features like Flag Poles or Outdoor Art and Statues. Meet Landscape...

Plants

Up-lighting - Highlighting the plants foliage. When using up-lighting on foliage we must manage the distance away from the plant that we place the light. When lights are too close to plants, we can get an undesirable white splash on them.

Down-lighting - Casting shadows of moving leaves is a wonderful way to bring a site to a life with movement.

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Choosing light fittings

When choosing light fittings there are many factors that will be part of our decision-making process:

  • Durability and waterproof nature of fittings

  • Salt resistance

  • Power output

  • Power consumption

  • Colour or temperature

  • Would you prefer to hide the fitting

  • Telescopic fittings to

  • Ease of installation

Colour temperature

Outdoors warmer lighting can be used than indoors.  It can be more of an accent and artistic approach rather than completely functional.

For lighting colour we have a temperature scale called the Kelvin Scale

2000K -3000K = Warm

3000K to 4500K = Cool

5000K - 6000K = Daylight

Installation

Now with low voltage LED there is often no need for an electrician if you have a suitable outdoor PowerPoint or you can lay cable from inside to out.

Maintenance

  • Choosing well-made fittings from good materials is most important for this

  • I recommend choosing fittings from stores that have a standard range that doesn’t change often so that you can get replacement parts in the future.

Session Outline

  • Lighting for safety

  • Lighting for aesthetics

  • Installation

  • Maintenance

Presentations