The Perfect Landscape Lighting for a Memphis Lawn
When comparing your landscape to the beautiful homes around you or the dream installation projects online, it can be hard to tell what is a good investment and what is best as a dream. One benefit that can work for any landscape is apparent when you compare landscapes at nightfall. Landscape lighting extends the beauty of your property into the night while also increasing visibility and safety across your property.
Though any landscape lighting makes a tremendous difference, there’s still a lot of nuance to the types of lighting you can choose. The perfect landscape lighting will both function perfectly and match the vision of your landscape. We’ll walk through what you need to consider when looking into lighting designs and some of our favorite customizations.
The Right Features
One of the major things to consider is unique lighting features. There’s a lot more to landscape lighting than just screwing in a lightbulb. The type of lighting can change the look and colors – or allow you to change the colors yourself.
LED Lighting Popular in Memphis
Image credit: Rutgers
LED lighting is probably something that you’ve heard a lot about from landscaping companies, but you might not know what makes it different. It’s usually what companies offer, especially locally in the Memphis area, like us. LED lighting is built with semiconductors that allow it to be vastly more energy efficient than a lightbulb. Not only does this make their lifespan much longer, but the efficiency is important considering how many lightbulbs you need to light your landscape versus your home. If you’re worried about the look being too harsh or fluorescent, there are varieties of LED bulbs in all sorts of colors and lighting temperatures. We find that LED lights have gotten popular for good reason, and we usually recommend them for your design.
Low-Voltage Lighting
This feature helps your lighting to have a bigger impact by allowing you to not just install more lighting, but also install lighting more safely. Usually, lightbulbs like the kind in your home have a voltage of around 120 volts. With low-voltage lighting, this uses a fraction of the voltage through transformers. By only using 10-12 volts, these are safer for the outdoors, especially in wet conditions. This means that they are easier to install and maintain, and might even be safe to replace or maintain on your own if you wish. Low-voltage lighting lets you install without as much fear – of shocks and of your budget.
Light Color (or Colors)
LED lighting can do a lot more than just shine a bright, white light. Using different bulbs can allow you a variety of colors. These, when combined with landscaping, can highlight unique features. Depending on the system (which you can read more about below), you can even install a landscape lighting system where the colors change back and forth or where you can change the colors depending on the season. Though this is more for aesthetic appeal than visibility or safety, combining the placement of colored lights with white lights can allow you to have the best of both worlds with proper design.
Smart Control Systems
As noted above, being able to change the colors of your landscape lighting can be done with the click of a button… or a tap on your phone. A smart lighting system is more expensive, but it allows you to control the timing of your lights or features like colors. This can help to save on energy by flicking your lights on and off, alongside the aesthetic changes. For landscape lighting that you want to have under your thumb, a smart system is a great option.
The Right Placement
Once you’ve figured out what kind of lighting you want, it’s all about the design. The right placement for lights isn’t just the different areas, but it’s also what kind of lighting you want in the area. There’s a variety of landscape light designs that work to shine in a unique way on your property. Here are a few of the types of lights you can install and the perfect placement for them.
Pathway Lights
Pathway lights are usually designed to be short, with a shielded or diffused top. They direct light downward, which reduces glare and shining in your eyes and increases visibility across the ground. This provides even, low illumination for both safety and visibility purposes. There are also perks to the design, like them being weather-resistant with a domed top. When we install them, we carefully measure out the light radius to have the perfect amount lining a pathway or patio.
Downlights
If you want some aesthetic enhancements, what about making sure that you can have beautiful moonbeams no matter the weather! Downlights are hung overhead either on a pillar or over an eave or tree. The way they are hung to cast soft, wide beams downward creates a lighting effect like moon or sunlight. Alongside the aesthetic appeal, it also reduces shadows and glare by being hung above eye level.
Well Lights
Taking things down a notch also has a good place for lining pathways or hardscaping features. Built in-ground, well lights (also called inground lights) cast light upward, in the way that downlights cast downward. These are usually sealed with glass, which helps them to be water and weather-resistant. This dramatic lighting can either be fixed in place or adjustable with a smart control system. Either way, the dramatic uplifting from shooting a direct beam of light is great for highlighting landscaping features and increasing visibility on your property.
Bullet Lights
Spot lights or bullet lights are also a great directional fixture that can cast dramatic lighting. These usually have a set aimable head. The narrow to medium beam spread is broader than well lights usually are, but they can also still have a unique look. The high intensity can either point toward a specific picture or result in very high visibility across your property.
The Right Considerations
If you find yourself stumped on how to incorporate some of your lighting, it can help to think of the purposes for installing in the first place. Based on what you’re considering for your landscape, there are some unique lighting options you can choose from or placements you can choose to enhance this further.
Highlighting Features
As we noted for a couple of the lighting types, like bullet and well lights, certain lights are perfect for highlighting a landscaping or hardscaping feature. After you’ve made a large investment, making the visibility strong even across the street can make a huge impact. If you want your landscaping to be visible year-round, consider the angle of your lighting and the placement across your property.
Lighting For Safety
Considering the placement of your lights is about more than street visibility. A large benefit of landscape lighting can be to make sure that you can see in the dark and navigate your property without tripping. Pathway lights are an obvious great way to make sure that you have a clear path forward, but downward lighting can also do a great job at having a broad, great spread.
Holiday Potential
Image credit: Tennessee Tech
Make sure that you picture every season when you picture your ideal landscape lighting. Along your roof or near ornamental bushes, there are some places where your lighting can really work to shine on holiday wreaths or lights to enhance your holiday decor. Even if it’s not a color system, having lights shine on your Christmas lights can really make a difference for the holiday season.
The Right Landscape Lighting Company in the Memphis Area
If talking about all of these features gave you some ideas for your dream landscape lighting, and you’re in the Memphis area, we can craft the ideal landscape lighting design for you. We have years of experience with not just landscape lighting, but with mindful dream landscape designs. Contact us today for a consultation to learn about your perfect landscape lighting design.