More Than Garden Lights - Planning Other Outdoor Lighting

Although this article is part of a series on garden lights, it occurred to me that if you are thinking about lighting up your garden you're probably also going to be retrofitting or installing lighting for other areas of your home as well. With that in mind I want to give you some ideas about lighting up some of your home's other features.

How to Light Your Driveway and Garage Door

The lighting people see when they first arrive at your home really has two jobs: To show people how to get into your property safely, and also to present your property in the best possible light (pun intended -- sorry).

Depending on how your neighborhood is set up you might not have to do much work here. If there is a big streetlight right at the end of your drive, obviously you don't need to add much if anything. If you are in a more rural area, you may need an extensive lighting system to guide your visitors and yourself to proper parking and to show the way to your front door.

Try it Before You Light it

I often recommend that people set up a temporary lighting system and then tried out themselves. When you do this, you often come across mistakes that you do not realize that you are making. "Oh gosh when I turn this corner and the walk that light is shining right in my eyes!"

You may want to consider a technique known as "moon lighting". This refers to the placement of soft lighting overhead in trees or from the eaves of the home. If you go this route, make sure nothing is placed so that it glares in your visitor's eyes.

Light up the Bad Guys

The other reason you may want to light up your drive and garage entry is security. Nothing is more inviting to the thief than a point of access into your home that has been plunged into darkness by the coming of night.

You don't need anything fancy here, a standard flood lamp will do fine. All you are trying to do is send a message to the bad people that if they try anything they will be easy to see. If you are using lights that are going to be connected to a motion-sensing device, you want to make sure that some of your lighting is not part of that circuit.

While it is very dramatic to have your house in darkness, only to be lit up like a nighttime Yankees game when people approach, it will be very annoying to your family and friends.

If you often have nighttime visitors, and you will be able to see them parking from inside your house, you may want to place lights so that the inside of their car is illuminated when they arrive. This does two things for you; first of all you'll be able to see who's arrived. Secondly, after they turn off their engines and their lights they will be able to see around the inside of their car and easily locate their umbrellas, coats etc.

Knock knock, who's there? Lighting your doorway

The entry to your house should be distinctively lit. You may want to consider using a different color or type of lighting for the walkway and doorway to your home then you use for the driveway or other landscaping. Again, take care not to make your visitors feel as if the FBI is interrogating them. Lighting should be angled so that it will not shine directly into the eyes of someone in front of your door.

The lighting that you put into place for your family and visitors at your garage and front doors is also security lighting which we will talk about next:

The most important thing to remember with security lighting is that what you're trying to do is not to brightly light your entire property. The 10 foot stretch of brick wall does not present a point where burglar is going to get into your house. Your existing garden lights will do fine there. What you want to do is to make sure that your windows, doors and points where someone might gain access to your second-floor are clearly visible to the casual observer. You can either light the spaces from overhead by placing lamps in trees or on the roof, from below by placing lamps within shrubbery or in low voltage fixtures along the pathway, or a combination of the above.

It is up to you whether your security lighting system is a part of your overall lighting system or is wired completely separately for safety sake. If your property contains many valuable possessions or his extremely large you may end up with several zones or systems. A simple three-bedroom ranch home would normally have one system that takes care of security, safety and landscape lighting.

In conjunction with the lighting there are any number of gadgets, gizmos, switches, sensors and alarms that can be incorporated. It is these features to separate security system from regular garden lights. Motion detection systems are probably the single most popular security lighting feature, but they should be used only where appropriate. Another important point to remember is that there should be security lighting controls at every point in the house from which you might find yourself inspecting the yard at night. In other words, if I am looking out over my garden, I want to be able to control my garden lights from that point. For this reason, a single central control point is usually not appropriate except for the smallest of properties.

We've reached the end of article number eight in the series on outdoor lighting and garden lighting, which is becoming the bane of my existence. Just kidding. These things are actually kind of fun to write. I hope that you join me for article number nine. I'll be taking a look at the proper techniques for lighting patios and decks, as well as outdoor work and storage areas.