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3 Tips for a Beautiful, Safe Landscape Lighting Design
3 Tips for a Beautiful, Safe Landscape Lighting Design
Summer has come to Minnesota, making this the time to gather your friends and family for backyard dinners and other fun outdoor activities. While watching TV or listening to music outside is very enjoyable and relaxing, doing so late at night can be hazardous without proper lighting.
Which brings us to landscape lighting. Not only does proper lighting in your yard reduce the chance of stumbling into things in the dark, it can transform your landscape into a colorful extension of your home’s aesthetic. Using different types of fixtures placed throughout your yard, you can create striking lighting designs and highlight architectural or landscape features. If you want the best-looking, safest yard possible, keep reading to see our landscape lighting tips for Edina, MN, residents.
SEE ALSO: How to Get More Out of Your Outdoor Spaces with Smart Technology
AUTOMATION AND LIGHTING SCENES
There are two very easy ways to use existing automation systems to make your yard safer. The first is to use automated lighting control. Set your lights to turn on and stay on whenever your back door opens after dark and you get instant illumination whenever anybody steps outside. With automation, you don’t have to worry about turning the lights on yourself, making it less likely someone will get hurt because the lights weren’t on.
The second method is to use preset lighting scenes. Instead of turning each fixture or group of fixtures on individually, you can turn the entire system on with one command. The lights come on quickly and just the way you want them, saving you time and protecting anyone who ventures outside.
BULLET LIGHTS AND PATH LIGHTS
On a more micro level, bullet lights and path lights are excellent options for lighting your way through your yard as well as shining a light on specific features. Path lights are smaller fixtures well-suited to illuminating the key paths through your landscape, while bullet lights can be placed along paths for a broad, soft glow or beside plants or other fixtures to highlight specific elements. Either way, you get a more subdued look than you would from bigger fixtures while still keeping everyone safe as they walk around.
LIP LIGHTS AND STEP LIGHTS
Tripping as you go up and down stairs is one of the easiest ways to potentially hurt yourself outdoors, and both lip lights and step lights make for excellent solutions.
Lip lights are mounted in small, hard-to-reach spots like under railings or steps by shining downward to light up the nearby area. You can use them to add accent lighting on bigger features in your yard as well as illuminate steps or other hazards.
Step lights serve a similar purpose to lip lights in a more limited manner. These fixtures are placed vertically on the front of steps to provide low-level illumination for the nearby area. While they can’t be placed in as many places as lip lights, they work as accent lights and help keep important pathways well lit.
WELL LIGHTS AND HANGING LIGHTS
Finally, we have fixtures specifically made to highlight landscape features. Well lights are small fixtures placed by plants or at the roots of trees that shine upward, while hanging lights are mounted from tree branches, beams or other surfaces and shine downward.
Both types of fixtures serve similar purposes. Well lights are great for highlighting landscape elements like plants or trees in a more restrained manner, while hanging lights do the same thing but with a broader area because they’re mounted above the ground. Either option gives you more tools in your lighting design toolbox while making your yard safer.
The right landscape lighting can add new dimensions of beauty to your outdoor spaces while enhancing safety. To learn more about our landscape lighting solutions, call us at (612) 353-5087, fill out our contact form or click on the chat box in your browser.