More Than Garden Lights - Planning Other Outdoor Lighting - part 2

Howdy! Welcome to article 9 in our outdoor and garden lights series, and part two of our sub series on lighting specific areas of your home's exterior. Once more into the breach!

Your patio is all decked out with lighting.

When you are planning the lighting for your patio, deck or other outdoor gathering area remember that your house is going to be lit at the same time. People are going to be moving from your outdoor entertainment back indoors to get food, drinks, kitchenware and hopefully to use the bathroom.

If you have a huge difference or contrast and light level and character, it will be jarring for them. Remember also that you will often look at your garden lighting from your deck or patio so keep that in mind as part of your overall plan as well.

It’s Your Deck, Not the End Zone, Use Outdoor Lights, Not Floodlights

First of all this is a situation where the simplest solution is usually not the best. Mounting a 150 W floodlight at each corner of your roof and then angling them towards the deck is going to look exactly like what it is -- cheap and thoughtless. A better idea is use a variety of permanent and temporary lighting fixtures and techniques. Here's an example:

You exit the sliding glass doors from your dining area onto your deck. In the distance you can see your garden lights -- a variety of lighting fixtures and techniques have been used, and the most attractive features of your outdoor space are highlighted.

Close by is your deck or patio itself. Diffuse light from overhead is provided by low power floods placed in surrounding trees. At each corner of the deck and attractive planter holds a small topiary that is lit from below in a soft pastel. Along the back edge of the deck the bench is under lit with small LEDs providing a clear indication exactly where the bench in the end of the deck lie.

Everybody play the Garden Lighting Game

Now that may sound complicated and involved. But stop and think all we've done is put a few carefully chosen floodlights in the proper locations overhead. A couple of small colored fixtures in each corner of the deck. And a row of LEDs under a bench. We're talking a total investment well under $100 and a power consumption of almost nothing. Yet in combination with the light streaming out of our house, moonlight and other incidental lighting in our neighborhood, we have all the illumination that we need for our little garden party.

Another thing that you going to want to consider is exactly what activities are going to be performed on your deck. If it's a large stack, and there may be games, such as beer pong or horseshoes (plastic horseshoes of course) the game areas need to be brightly lit enough so that your guests can see what they're doing. By the same token if the focal point of your outdoor entertainment is going to be a single table used for cards were dining want to make sure that there is enough light in that area to support a given activity.

With respect to controls -- you may want to have a set of switches or small control panel outside on the deck itself. If you do this, make sure that they can be overridden from inside the house. If what you're trying to do late at night is look at your deck because someone who should not be there might be, you don't want Mr. might be to be able to turn off the lights.

Try to see it my way -- we can work it out, in the outdoor lights

Anywhere you are going to be doing work needs to be well lit. The fact that your workplace is outside does not exempt it from this requirement. When you're deciding what kind of lighting to install in your potting shed or woodworking shop the first consideration is exactly what you're going to be doing their.

It makes sense that precision woodworking is going to require extremely bright and shadow free lighting. Working with plants in your potting bar and -- not so much. Whatever your application, one thing that you do want to take into consideration is that any old enclosed area needs to be completely lit. This means no dark corners. If you leave dark corners or areas with little or no illumination I can guarantee you that you will have unwanted visitors. Everybody likes to garden -- nobody likes to reach for a tulip bulb and grab the mouse.

Lighting inside your work shed is a bit easier to deal with than other external lighting, mostly because it is not really external. Nothing wrong with just putting up a few shop lights or other kinds of fluorescent tube fixtures here. You do want to make sure that you can override local switches with controls inside your house for security sake.

Don't forget that you need to get from your house to the work area, and your regular garden lights may not illuminate the path. If you are like me and you like to do little woodworking in the evening, it's really nice to be able to find your shed. Treat the door to your shed and the walkway to it the same way you treat your front door and the walkway from your driveway. They don't have to be brightly lit, but you do need to be able to see what you're doing. If your shed is usually locked, make sure you have enough illumination to find your keyhole.

If you have an extremely large yard all these different lighting systems in areas can operate independently but you will have situations where you want to either shut them off separately or very lighting brightness. If your outdoor space is small, and includes both entertaining and work areas, you will find that your lighting systems may overlap, or that you may only have one system. You want to keep in mind that when the neighbors are over to play spades and drink beer on the deck, they may not be interested in outdoor lighting which provides them with a brightly lit view of your potting shed. For this reason, you will probably want each area to have a dimmer.

Well, we are at the end of article number nine in our apparently never-ending series of articles on outdoor and garden lights. If you stuck with me this far, you may as well take it all the way.

Next time we'll take a look at lighting up your house and garden for parties, holidays and other special occasions.