When lighting your garden or outdoor space, it is important to follow a similar design to your interiors. The garden is often an extension of your home, and therefore the lighting design should follow the same layout and effects to create a harmonious balance between interior and exterior.
A garden can be broken down into key elements, such as walls, pathways, focal features, greenery and hosting areas.
Here are Truly Lighting’s top tips on how to create sympathetic lighting schemes for heritage projects:
- Accent architectural features
Before lighting a garden, the exterior features of a building should be showcased. Uplighting walls, fences, steps, archways, and any other interesting architectural features begins the transition of the illumination from inside to outside. This also sets the house as a beautiful backdrop to be seen from the rest of the garden.
- Spotlight focal points
The lighting scheme should draw the eye to focal garden features that you wish to showcase as main points of the design. This could include trees, sculptures, pavilions or water features. This way, as it turns to dusk, these beautiful elements catch the eye and draw the rest of the space towards them.
- Al fresco dining
Lighting is needed to create an ambient atmosphere to enjoy outdoor drinks and dining. Whether this is achieved through lanterns, fairy lights or wall mounted lights casting a warm glow onto a garden table and chairs, your outdoor space can be enjoyed from day to night.
- Guiding paths and wayfinding
Exterior lighting is also vital as a safety feature for when it grows dark, softly illuminating paths, steps and walkways to create a clear route around the garden. This can be achieved with uplights, wall washers, and wall mounted downlights, to add various layers of lighting at different heights.
- Flexible solutions for greenery growth
To illuminate plants, hedges and greenery, spike mounted spotlights can be repositioned as new plants are grown. Those with adjustable mounting heights also create an ideal solution to meet the level of plants as they continue to grow. Green fittings rather than black also blend seamlessly into gardens so that only the effect of the lighting is seen.
For your next garden project, contact Truly Lighting to see how we can make a difference in your exterior lighting design.