It’s amazing how big a difference residential outdoor lighting can make. The difference between a beautiful home with sparse lighting (or no lighting at all) vs. a beautiful home with layered, smart, and well-planned lighting is huge!

When it comes to residential outdoor lighting, there are many different details to consider. Will your lights be compliant with the ordinances in your neighborhood or city? What types of lighting are there, and how can you use them to highlight the beauty of your home? How can outdoor lights make your life easier?

Let’s look at how you can make the most of your home using residential outdoor lighting.

Making the Most of Residential Outdoor Lighting: Tips and Tricks

Well-installed, beautiful outdoor lights can really increase the curb appeal of your home. You might not be planning to move any time soon, but it’s a good bonus if you do decide to sell at some point.

Let’s examine the other benefits of outdoor lighting and how you can use it effectively to improve the look and feel of your home.

Comply With HOA & Local Ordinances

If you’ve moved into a neighborhood with a homeowners association, you’ll need to double-check that your residential lighting complies with their rules. HOAs may want to protect their neighborhoods from light pollution and aesthetic disruptions. They may have guidelines including:

• Type of lighting
• Number of lights
• Duration of outdoor lighting
• Brightness

It’s important to check that your chosen lights will comply with these rules. When we install lights on a property, we can help with this: we can make sure we go over how to dim lights using the app, how to set timers to align with the rest of the neighborhood, and so on. We’ll also make sure that your lights won’t shine directly into the neighbor’s bedroom window, so your neighbors should be happy with your choice.

If you don’t live in a HOA neighborhood, you may still have local ordinances to contend with. These vary depending on the city or town you live in.

It’s unusual to have bans or very strict rules around outdoor lighting, but it’s worth checking.

Create a Lighting Plan

Not all outdoor lights are made equal! We recommend that our customers do a walk around their property and look at the areas they want to light up. You may want track lights, flood lights, or perhaps a combination of both. There may be areas you want to specifically highlight, or areas that are a bit too dark at night to feel safe.

Once you’ve written a list of your lighting needs, you’ll be able to make a much more effective plan with lights in strategic places. Our experts will then be able to design the perfect lighting solution for your home using the information you’ve gathered. If you’re still unsure of where to begin—get in touch! We can help you get started creating the best lighting plan to suit your needs.

Layer Your Lighting for a More Professional Look

Let’s talk about different types of lighting, and how you can layer them together to create a warm glow around your home.

Downlighting is lighting that is directed downward. It mimics the natural direction of sunlight or moonlight. For example, track lights around your roofline or automatic security lights tend to cast light down.

Uplighting, on the other hand, is when light is cast upward. So flood lights, placed on the ground, cast light upwards onto your property or onto any other features you want to showcase—you might want to light up your landscaping, for example.

You can layer both uplights and downlights to create a warm, comforting glow around your home and ensure that none of the beautiful features get lost in shadow. Our Gemstone Lights track lights and flood lights work beautifully together to highlight the best parts of your home—you can read more about this in our blog post about architectural lighting.

Outsource Installation & Maintenance to the Pros

When we install Gemstone Lights on your property—whether that’s track lights or flood lights—the installation is designed to be minimally disruptive. So, for example, when we install our flood lights, the wires are buried underground, but we do it carefully to avoid damaging your lawn or patio areas.

Once they’re installed, you won’t need to maintain our permanent outdoor lighting. If you do lose a bulb, the part is covered under our bumper-to-bumper warranty, and many of our dealers offer their own labor warranties. But our lights are designed to last through really harsh weather conditions, so you shouldn’t have to worry.

Create Lighting Zones for Architectural Lighting

With our residential outdoor lighting, you can create lighting zones, which means you can light up different areas of your property along the same track. You might have distinctive upper windows, for example, that you want to highlight. You can create zones for each window, which you can light differently than the rest of the house.

This is especially useful when it comes to lighting areas like your entryways, helping everyone to see clearly when they come and go.

Enhance Safety Around Your Property

Residential outdoor lighting comes with some security bonuses, too. For example, good track lighting combined with a smart doorbell can help in the event that you have an intruder.

Also, beautiful residential lighting helps everybody in the neighborhood to stay safe. This is particularly useful on occasions like Halloween; well-lit homes make kids and adults feel safer, and you can even join the festivities by altering your lighting to a Halloween-friendly pattern using the Gemstone Lights app.

Automate Your Lighting

Our customers enjoy having their lights switch on and off using a timer. This can easily be done using the app, and it ensures that your lights will always come on at the right time, even if you’re not home. This is particularly useful if you do live in an area with restrictions around residential outdoor lighting.

And, for example, if you have teenagers at home, you can ensure they’ll be able to see safely when they get home without having to remember to switch the lights on yourself.

Using the new Gemstone Lights app, you can set your lights on a sunrise/sunset timer. This is automatically adjusted to daylight changes, which means they will perform consistently without you having to do anything.

You can also set one timer for a group of devices. This means your flood lights and track lights will all switch on at once if you want them to.

There are more options here to play with, too: you can have your lights switch automatically to Christmas mode on the first of December, for example. This kind of automation means you don’t even have to think about your outdoor lighting once it’s installed (unless you want to).

Frequently Asked Questions

Questions: How much does it cost to run my residential outdoor lighting?

Answer: We calculated that an average-sized home (with 117 linear feet of roofline) with track lights running 6 hours per day will cost $4.34 (average estimation) per month, which adds up to $52.80 per year. You can read more about this in-depth in our blog post about the running costs of Gemstone Lights.

Questions: Can I light up separate areas like a pool house?

Answer: Yes, you can! You can light up separate buildings on your property, and you can control them using the same app that controls the lighting around your main building. This way, you can enhance all of your outdoor spaces. If you’re a business owner, you can even use our app to control the commercial outdoor lighting on several of your properties at once.

Questions: Can I control my outdoor lights using different devices?

Answer: Yes, you can control the lights using multiple devices—everyone in the family can play around with them if they want to! You just need to download the app and log in using your details.

Where to Go for Permanent Residential Outdoor Lighting

If you’ve got a plan for your outdoor lights and you want to know more, contact one of our Authorized Dealers, and they’ll be able to give you advice and a price quote.