We understand that finding your home’s perfect outdoor lighting setup might feel overwhelming. What happens when you have several areas you want to draw attention to? How do you ensure that your home looks warm and welcoming every night? Rest assured that our certified professionals will consider all of this (and more!) when installing your permanent outdoor lighting. They’ll work with you to create the perfect lighting setup for your home and lifestyle—and create a beautiful display that will last for decades.
When designing the outdoor lighting setup of your dreams, we like to deploy a few downlighting techniques, from classic architectural lighting to interesting ways to create bold shadows and draw attention to specific areas.
What Is Downlighting?
To keep it brief, downlighting is any lighting technique casts light downward. For example, our track lights create a lovely glow by illuminating everything below them, including the building and the driveway or yard underneath.
In contrast, uplighting is the technique that casts light upward. Flood lights are typically used for this. You can combine both, but we’ll get into that later.
Below are a few of our favorite downlighting techniques.
1. Moonlighting
Moonlighting is a lighting technique designed to evoke the warm ambiance of moonlight filtering through trees in your yard. Some homeowners even install lights in their trees, which really creates a natural yet whimsical feeling. Visitors can enjoy the lights flickering down through the branches, swaying in the breeze, which is beautiful and calming and perfect if you prefer the natural look.
However, you don’t need to light up your trees to create the same effect. Think of your home’s tallest feature: this might be columns, pillars, your roof, a permanent gazebo, or porch. Installing our track lights here will allow the light to filter down, creating a natural, romantic look miming soft moonlight.
It’s easy to select the perfect white light with our Gemstone Lights app, too. Warm white creates a sense of coziness and comfort that is particularly nice to come home to after a long day. Because we use RGBWW LEDs in our lights, we can achieve a true warm white that looks softer and warmer than cooler whites.
2. Architectural Lighting
There are a few different types of architectural lighting. Generally speaking, architectural lighting is a lighting technique designed to illuminate specific areas of your home. It is fantastic for making your home feel safer and more welcoming, highlighting specific areas you love about your home, and increasing curb appeal.
Accent Lighting
Accent lighting is perfect for creating a stunning focal point in your outdoor space, and many of our customers enjoy using track lights to achieve this. If you want to highlight a particular element of your home, downlighting is one way to do it.
Using our app, it’s easy to isolate specific track lights to draw attention to certain areas. This creates depth and texture and draws the eye to specific points.
To make specific areas stand out, the app allows you to isolate specific areas and create ‘zones’ for them. These zones can then be controlled separately. For example, if you have a beautiful archway on your property, it’s easy to make the lights above it a different color to make it pop. This is also good for illuminating awkward angles and areas of your building that are normally in shadow, particularly on the higher areas of your property, which can easily get lost in darkness without being appropriately lit.
Task Lighting
Think functional! Task lighting is designed to illuminate specific areas for practical/safety reasons. For example, you could illuminate walkways or doorways to prevent people from tripping or to help them feel safer when they arrive home at night.
Task lighting can be done in the same way as accent lighting. You’ll just need to spend some time creating zones, which can be controlled separately. For example, you may want to have the doorways lit just to ensure the last person gets in the house safely, but you don’t need to have the entire house glowing.
Plus, our lights work on a timer (up to 64 of them can be run simultaneously). So, suppose you know someone will be arriving home late from work on a particular day. In that case, our app can design the lights to fit the needs of your household by switching them off automatically after they’ve arrived home without you having to open the app and do it yourself each day.
Ambient Lighting
Ambient lighting fills a specific area with light, creating a warm and inviting atmosphere. Think pathways, pools, decks, and so on. Dimmable downlighting from track lights can cast a soft glow, allowing you to enjoy your outdoor spaces at night. It’s the perfect technique for parties, as it extends your living space into the outdoors, allowing more people to visit.
3. Wall Washing
Another interesting lighting technique is wall washing. You will need lights placed slightly away from the surface you want to illuminate, such as your garden walls. Shining a light indirectly will create a wide area of light, allowing you to create a warm and safe outdoor space your loved ones can hang out in even on the darkest nights. Wall washing targets specific areas, like the corner of your yard or your decking.
Wall washing is slightly different from another popular technique, wall grazing. In this technique, light is cast more directly onto a wall, illuminating the texture of the surface. This can create a dramatic look that is very eye-catching and interesting to look at. If you want to illuminate a wide swath of your wall, consider having our smart flood lights mounted up high to cast light downward.
4. Shadowing
Shadowing is as it sounds – creating dramatic, eye-catching shadows. This works very well on textured walls, or near plants or trees. To create this look, have one of our LED flood lights affixed behind the object in question, aimed toward the ground. This will create a bold shadow, and is ideal if you want to highlight your plants or small trees interestingly.
5. Mirror Lighting
Mirror lighting allows you to take advantage of pools or garden ponds. Attaching lights to a nearby wall or trees casts light downward, which reflects into the pool or pond, which looks stunning (and creates even more light).
6. Downlighting and Uplighting: How to Combine Both
We’d recommend combining downlighting and uplighting for an even, balanced glow, which many customers do. Take this example from our gallery:
We like the combination of the flood lights by the trees and the track lights. It has a nice welcoming glow – it’s the kind of home you feel excited to return to, and it’s lovely for visitors. You can also see that the pathway is illuminated, and the lighting highlights the home’s beauty, rather than distracting from it.
If you’re unsure, walk around your property and think about the areas you want to illuminate. Flood lights can be placed strategically to complement your down lighting, creating a safe area to walk and illuminating the parts of your home that you love the most. Don’t worry if you’re still not sure where to place your lights—our authorized dealers will talk you through it and help you decide what works best for you! Reach out for a free quote to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Does it take long to install track lights?
Answer: No. Installation for Gemstone Lights usually takes about a day for the average home, although that depends on the size of your property and if you have any other buildings. The installation process is designed to be as minimally disruptive as possible – for example, when we install flood lights, we bury the wires under the ground to prevent people from tripping, but we’ll make sure to cause as little disruption to your lawn as possible.
Question: Can I install track lights on other buildings (like pool houses?)
Answer: Yes. We can install track lights (and flood lights) on other buildings. For example, if you have a pool house, you can enjoy the same lighting benefits as your main house, and control them separately or together if you want to.
Question: Is it easy to control the lights using the app?
Answer: Yes. While the app offers a lot of flexibility, it doesn’t take long to learn how to use it. We have a range of premade patterns you can download if you don’t want to make them yourself.
To Sum Up…
Downlighting is the perfect way to showcase the beauty of your home even on late, dark nights. Beautiful downlights can increase your property’s curb appeal and create a welcoming atmosphere. If you’re interested in learning more, contact one of our Authorized Dealers for a quote and to get the ball rolling.