Tips For Your Outdoor Lighting
Maximizing your outdoor setting
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As a key part of your home improvement quest, finding the right home decor can change the feel of your house; and not just the inside. Furnishing the outside of your house is as important as furnishing the inside. There are plenty of home furnishes for outside, but one of the key components to a good backyard or patio, is lighting. Quality outdoor lighting can make all the difference when hosting that family barbeque or Super Bowl party, especially when the evenings run a little later than expected. Home improvement has become a staple of American culture.
There are a wide array of products that should help to bolster your outdoor lighting landscape. From lanterns to floodlights, and everything in between, all these products can be found on the Internet, through various retailers. The key is being able to find the perfect discount outdoor lighting that will complement your landscape. One of the most common outdoor lighting fixtures is the outdoor lighting post. These range from the lower end tiki torches to expensive Victorian posts scattered throughout your backyard.
Another fairly common, and more practical outdoor lighting fixture is flood lighting. Floodlights are great for really amping up your outside experience. Whatever type of lighting you are looking for, remember to check the both the Internet and local retailers, like Home Depot, to find the best discount for your outdoor lights.
An added bonus of outdoor lighting is that it makes your home safer and more secure by providing illumination for walkways, steps and entrances, even more so when used in conjunction with timers and photo cells. A burglar's perfect target is a home that is dark. They will usually avoid homes with outdoor lighting or homes where someone appears to be home and go where they can work unseen, in the dark.
Tips and Tricks for Your Lighting
- Always conceal the light source when garden lighting, either with a glare guard on the luminaire or by tucking it behind a shrub, large branch, wall, or rock. Ideally, you will be unable to see where the exterior light originates.
- Avoid installing garden lights in the undergrowth of low shrubs or tall grasses, when exterior lighting. The beam of light needs unimpeded passage from the fixture to the focal point so there are no distracting spots of reflected light (unless you want a shadowy effect, in which case the opposite applies)
- Don't over light. Less is more!!! Extremely bright garden lighting often has a garish, theatrical look. We therefore recommend only using bulkhead luminaries for security and commercial applications.
- Experiment with backlighting. Lighting trees in the background of a forested area creates silhouettes in the foreground. An up lighted hedge behind a shrub or tree will do the same.
- Don't illuminate every surface when garden lighting. Shadows work to define lighted areas.
- Create a different look with outdoor garden lighting at night than it has during the day. The night view will often be more dramatic than the day view. We use the term 'Picking out' as will only see what you light at night not the entire surrounding area!
- Take advantage of the many beam angles, frosted lenses and mounts available so that your garden lighting suit your situation.
- Use the highest quality equipment, and materials, your budget will allow; it will last longer and offer more options.