Many of us put so much effort into making the outside of our homes look beautiful. Whether you’re into landscaping, you’re cultivating some beautiful trees, or you have some interesting, unique architectural features, you can make these areas pop using accent lighting for outdoor features.
With accent lighting, you can draw attention to the areas of your home or business that you love the most. Here’s why we love outdoor accent lighting, and the ways you can use it!
The Many Benefits of Outdoor Accent Lighting
Outdoor accent lighting can make a huge difference to the enjoyment of your home. If you’ve invested money in landscaping or you have beautiful architectural features, lighting can change how you see these parts of your home (literally). Let’s look at the benefits of outdoor accent lighting:
Highlight Landscaping and Architectural Features
Many of us put a lot of time, thought, and effort into our landscaping. Accent lighting can shine a (literal) spotlight on your work. We’d recommend our smart flood lights here; they can be installed discreetly, with the wires buried underground, with minimal disruption to your lawn. Flood lights can be controlled remotely and will help to light up your landscaping, shining a spotlight on your efforts and creating dramatic shadows, too.
The same goes for your architectural features. If you have small details on the outside of your property, you can focus your floodlights on those so you can enjoy them in the evenings, too. The same goes for your pool area, gazebos, or water features.
Smart flood lights are the way forward for highlighting the outdoor features you love so you can enjoy them at any time of the day.
Maximizing Curb Appeal
While you may not be planning to move for a while, permanent outdoor accent lighting can really improve the curb appeal of your property. The first glance at a property can make or break a sale, so if you are thinking of moving on in the next couple of years, lighting can turn the heads of the right buyers at the right time.
But curb appeal is still important even if you’re not moving. You want to feel a warm, happy glow when you pull into your driveway every night; you want your friends and family to feel happy and excited when they see your home, too.
Increased Enjoyment of Outdoor Spaces
Relaxing, beautiful outdoor spaces don’t just have to be enjoyed in the daytime. While it’s lovely to sit outside in the afternoon sun, accent lighting can open up those spaces in the evenings, too, creating a cozy and atmospheric environment to relax or socialize in.
This is especially useful if you live in an area with a lot of sun. Many of us have been experiencing harsh heat waves recently, which means a lot of working indoors with the air conditioning switched on. With outdoor lighting, you can enjoy some late-night socializing in the (at least a little) cooler evening air.
If you’re entertaining, being able to spread out into the yard/patio areas is a real bonus, especially if you’ve invited more people than your indoor space can reasonably handle! Enjoying outdoor features like patios or gardens allows you to spread out and relax.
Residential track lights (which sit on a track around the roofline of your home) can help to give a soft glow to your yard or patio areas, making it feel much more inviting to hang out in.
Safety and Security
There are safety and security benefits to outdoor feature lighting, too. If you have various family members arriving home in the dark, having outdoor lights to light the way prevents anyone from tripping on their way in.
Plus, lighting up darker areas will help your family members (or customers, if you’re a business owner) to feel safer and more secure, with no dark areas to worry about. You can also light up your home when you’re not there, which may help to keep your property safe.
More Control
The good thing about our Gemstone Lights is that you can control and customize them via our convenient mobile HUB app, which we’re really proud of. The app gives you complete control over your outdoor lighting.
This means you can pick from an incredible 16 million color and pattern combinations. You can create your own patterns or choose one of our premade options. Once you’ve found the perfect shade and pattern for you, you can save them, which means you can find them quickly again.
Plus, you can control your outdoor lighting remotely. So, if you’re away from home, you can protect your property and keep your home looking cozy for any family members who are still there.
How to Illuminate Your Outdoor Features
Illuminating your outdoor spaces is easy once you’ve decided which features you want to highlight, but it can be helpful to differentiate between down lighting and up lighting. Put simply, down lighting casts light on anything underneath it, while up lighting illuminates anything directly above it.
For example, you might want to use downlighting to light up doorways so people can see where they’re going, and you can use uplighting to highlight your landscaping or architectural features that you want to put in the spotlight (literally).
Accent lighting doesn’t have to mean that only your most prominent outdoor features are illuminated. We love using our track lights to cast a subtle glow on your home while simultaneously using them as down lighting to enhance specific areas. Take the example below:
You can see how this has illuminated the stairs and entryway to the home, while giving a warm glow to the whole outdoor space. The above example looks subtle and beautiful, and compliments the large windows.
However, your home may be a little more unusually shaped, with ‘hidden’ corners and features. In that case, a combination of smart flood lights and track lights may work for you, like so:
Here, the combination of flood lights and track lights works well and draws attention to the trees. If you’re a keen gardener, you can use flood lights to draw focus towards your most prized features.
Flood lights can be very useful to illuminate particular spots, like in this example:
Here, a flood light subtly illuminates the sign without being too intrusive, allowing customers to find their way on dark evenings. You can control the intensity of the lights, too, making them dimmer and then gradually brightening them as the sun goes down.
Whatever lighting option you go for—flood lights, track lights, or a combination—our Authorized Dealers can help you design the best lighting situation for your needs. The installation process is taken care of for you, and they’re designed to stay put no matter the weather, so you can relax knowing your lights will be good for years to come.
Enhancing Your Home or Business With Accent Lighting
Accent lighting can help to enhance your home by:
- Showcasing the beauty of your home, even at night
- Keeping everyone safe by lighting up dark areas
- Highlighting areas you’ve worked hard on, like landscaping or garden work
- Lighting up outdoor areas like patios or pools so you can enjoy them, even late at night
- Creating a fun party vibe with patterns and colors
And there are benefits for businesses, too:
- Keeping customers safe late at night (for example, using commercial track lighting).
- Helping to light the local community, making everyone feel safer
- Signposting customers to your business at night
- Joining in with local festivals or holidays, creating a sense of community spirit
How to Turn Your Whole Yard Into a Stunning Outdoor Feature
It’s worth putting the effort into creating inviting outdoor spaces: they can act as a feature in themselves and can be highlighted along with your other features like fountains, gazebos, and landscaping. There are a few ways you can really make the most of your outdoor spaces:
- Choose comfortable furniture. Outdoor furniture doesn’t have to be stiff and uncomfortable—think big cushions and soft furnishing. If you have a gazebo or a large storage space, you won’t have to worry about them getting wet in the rain. You can also add outdoor rugs near your seating to create an even more inviting vibe.
- Create a soft, warm glow. A combination of flood lighting and track lights can help here. You can also use candles or fire pits to create a cozy environment. Our Gemstone lights can provide true warm white; this is difficult to find in some outdoor lights, and it creates a lovely ambiance while lighting up the space.
- Think about the flow of the space. How do people get to the outdoor space? Are the paths and doorways clear of clutter, easy to get through, and well-lit?
- Keep home comforts nearby. A basket of blankets is always useful as the cooler evening air kicks in. Add a couple of tables for drinks, and you can enjoy your outdoor spaces to the full.
FAQs
Question: What happens if a bulb goes out?
Answer: Our lights are tough and durable, but we offer a ten-year warranty, so if a bulb does go out, you’ll be covered. An authorized dealer will be able to fix it up for you.
Question: Will your lights work all year round?
Answer: Yes, our lights are designed to withstand some tough weather conditions, so even if the weather changes wildly between seasons where you live, your lights will still work beautifully.
Question: Is the app available for iOS and Android?
Answer: Yes, our Gemstone Lights app is available for both iOS and Android.
To Sum Up
There are many reasons to invest in accent lighting for outdoor features, from highlighting your landscaping or patio to increased security and comfort for the whole family. Lighting is a key element when it comes to enjoying all the areas of your home, inside and out!
Whether you decide to go for track lights or flood lights (or a combination of both), you can get in touch with one of our Authorized Dealers to get a quote for installation.