Good residential landscape lighting can make all the difference in the look and feel of your outdoor spaces. At Gemstone Lights, we love landscape lighting. When it’s done right, it celebrates the time, money, and work you’ve put into your outdoor spaces. Plus, it can add massive amounts of curb appeal, increasing the property value of your home.
Finding the right combination and placement of landscape lighting can take some time, and there are some common pitfalls people come across when they start working on lighting their outdoor spaces.
Residential landscape lighting should complement your outdoor space and blend in enough that you don’t really notice the lighting equipment. It should allow you to enjoy your hard work, even at night, and highlight the areas you’re most proud of. It shouldn’t be distracting, off-putting, or overwhelming.
Here are a few things you should avoid when designing your landscape lighting:
1. Mistaken Placement
Placement is everything when it comes to outdoor lighting. The key to landscape lighting is to highlight the features you love the most and draw attention to them—not just to your lights.
This means you can’t mimic someone else’s lighting design because it might not work. You need to put a lot of thought into your specific building, the landscaping, and the areas you want to shine when the lights switch on.
Our Authorized Dealers are great at helping you figure out placement if you need extra help, but we recommend walking around your property and noting the areas you want to highlight as a first step. These might be topiary, trees, or even a pool.
Strategically placed flood lights and track lights can help make these areas pop.
You also don’t want your lights accidentally shining into your neighbor’s bedroom window. Our professional installers will ensure that your lights are positioned not only to shine where you want them but also so that they don’t shine anywhere you don’t.
2. Setting Your Lights Too Bright or Too Dim
We love bright lights, but sometimes full brightness is different from what you need. For example, a flood light on the brightest setting can be a bit jarring for people walking by. Something softer and gentler is often a better solution, especially for residential neighborhoods.
However, the opposite problem can also be true. Lights that are too dim won’t effectively showcase your landscaping. Using our Gemstone Lights app, you can adjust the brightness of your lights from your phone until you get the balance just right.
It’s also worth thinking about color. Some colors work better than others in setting the atmosphere. You might want to pick a warm white, for example, which creates a cozy, welcoming vibe, or choose colorful lighting to celebrate an upcoming holiday.
3. Not Choosing Energy-Efficient Lights
Not all lights are created equally, especially regarding how efficient they are. For example, incandescent bulbs or halogen bulbs waste up to 90% of energy just from heat loss. This means you’re paying more in the long run on your energy bills.
LED lights are much more efficient. They produce light using electroluminescence. Not to get too technical, but this essentially means the end result is bright light with no wasted energy through heat.
It may feel like you’re only saving a small amount of money at first, but as the years go on, it does add up. Any household bills that you can reduce will be helpful in the long run, so picking energy-efficient lights is a good idea for landscape lighting—plus, energy-efficient lights tend to last much longer!
4. Lack of Weatherproofing
If you live in a state that experiences big changes with the seasons, you’ll know how important this is. Protecting your outdoor space from blistering heat, blizzards, heavy rainfall, and everything in between can be an all-consuming task.
Our lights were designed in Calgary and can cope with some incredibly harsh weather conditions. Once they’re installed, you shouldn’t have to worry about them.
If you’ve chosen a more temporary solution for your outdoor lighting, you may need to ensure it is covered or taken inside before a storm, for example. So, keep that in mind when you’re designing your landscape lighting.
5. Only Choosing One Type of Lighting
We think flood lights look incredible for landscape lighting. They highlight areas you’ve worked super hard on, whether you’re talking about your prized flowers or a pond you’ve built from scratch. Flood lights light up these areas and create dramatic shadows, which leads to a striking effect.
However, flood lights are not the only option. Flood lights create uplighting, which is when lighting shines upward from below an object or an area of a building. This creates strong light, and it looks stunning.
But if you like, you can somewhat diffuse the shadowing by installing track lights, too. Our residential track lights are installed around the building, creating a downlighting effect, which is when light shines downward.
The combination of both can create a very warm and welcoming environment, highlighting your whole garden while still keeping focus on those specific areas.
In this example from our Instagram gallery, you can see that the track lighting creates a warm glow, while the flood lights make the trees stand out:
So, the key is not to limit yourself to just one type of lighting. A combination can be the best way to create a professional-looking residential landscape lighting design.
6. Chasing Lighting Trends
Like everything, lighting trends come and go. It’s tempting to plan your landscape lighting around what you see online, but it’s worth noting that certain types of lighting are timeless.
For example, we love the orb lights that pop up online. They’re solar-powered, so they’re energy-efficient, and they’re fairly easy to install. However, these types of lights are not as bright or as durable as permanent lighting solutions, and you might want to replace them in a couple of years when a new lighting shape emerges.
Classic track lights and flood lights always stay in style; once installed, you won’t have to do anything. The app allows you to switch up the colors and patterns to your heart’s content, so you’ll still be able to make changes to suit your mood!
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Will permanent flood lights disturb my landscaping?
Answer: No. The lights are installed permanently and discreetly, with the wires buried under the ground, so you won’t see any wires or equipment. We can do this with minimal disruption to your landscaping.
Question: Can I control each flood light individually?
Answer: Yes. Using the app, you can control each flood light. This means you can make certain areas brighter, alternate colors, or switch some off while others remain switched on.
Our new Gemstone Lights app allows you to control up to 4,096 lights, which means you’ll have even more flexibility regarding flood lights and track lights.
Question: Can I switch on my landscape lighting when I’m away on vacation?
Answer: Yes. Many of our customers like to have their outdoor lighting switched on while they’re away for safety reasons. You can control your lights using the app while you’re away from home and even set them on a timer so they switch on and off automatically until you get back.
Our Final Thoughts on Residential Landscape Lighting
No matter what features you decide to highlight, you’ll hopefully have avoided some common mistakes when lighting your landscaping. If you want to learn more, contact our Authorized Dealers for a quote!