Home and Garden Lighting - Landscape Lighting Design
About Landscape Lighting Design
Introduction to Lighting Design for Outdoors
Landscape lighting has improved with technology over the last several years. New sources of landscape lighting are being developed constantly. Landscaping is an important feature of residential homes nowadays. People are becoming gamer and more creative and turning landscaping into spectacular areas of their homes. Landscape lighting is a perfect way to highlight the architectural features throughout landscaping. Lighting used throughout landscaping can also offer safety to those who wish to be outdoors at night time whether it’s celebrating or enjoy a quite night on the patio. Design Basics
Before deciding on an initial design you must ask yourself, what type of lighting design you want to achieve? It may be to enhance your landscaping, safety around the home by night time, property value, or to highlight the features throughout your garden. The proposed reason can include all of the above mentioned reasons. Incorporating several designs can help achieve a great design around your home and landscaping for example highlighting a garden which is near the front entrance of your home will not only provide safety for those entering the home it will also shine light onto the pretty and colorful flowers throughout your landscaping. The landscaping design basic you wish to achieve are very similar to the designs of the actual landscaping. You should firstly determine focal points where light may be predominately needed. Another point to consider is whether the area you are placing the landscaping lights is a high used area, if so then you may need to implement more lights than you first thought of. The most important point of design basics is will the lighting enhance the coloring, textures and beauty of the landscape.
Before you decide on the right position of the lighting you should draw up a site map of the landscape area. This will help you into seeing the overall picture. Installing the lighting whilst you ensure of where the lights will be needed can cause problems as you may find yourself installing and reinstalling the lights several times. Considering Lighting Fixtures
Once you have decided on the areas where you would like the lights to be you should consider what type of lighting fixture will suit your landscaping themes. Lanterns, lamps, mounted lights and post lights are all commonly used throughout landscaping today. Carefully plan ahead and shop around to see which lighting fixture you will be truly happy with.
There are also several types of different lighting sources some require electrical cables and other do not. Some of the common sources of lighting include:
- Solar Lighting! Requires no electrical wiring and is generated by the suns rays.
- Low Voltage lighting! Requires cables and wiring which is shock less and safe to be used around children and pets. They are also weather resistant.
- Outdoor lighting! Requires cables and wiring an effective and much brighter source of lighting.
- Landscaping Lighting! Design specifically for outdoor use, requires electrical wiring and is not affected by the weather.
Electrical Systems
So you have now decided on the placement of the lights as well as the types of fixtures your system is designed. The main feature of the electrical system is the transformer which is implemented into the lighting fixtures. The transformers main ability and use is to transfer electricity to the lighting to power on. It transforms 120 volt normal household electricity currents into 12 volts of electricity to power the lighting. 12 volts is safe and efficient for all outdoor applications. Another common problem which occurs with landscape lighting is that installers do not think ahead, you see you must ensure that you leave a couple of inches of cables and wiring to make way for plant growth and movement. If you do not do so the plant growth can rip up the lighting and cause several problems in the future.
