As you build your home, you’d want it to look at its best as much as possible. After all, you spent plenty of money on making your house. When you choose to design it, you shouldn’t forget that it needs to look great even at night, and that doesn’t just mean the inside of your home. During the night, you may want to make your home bright and homey to give emphasis on how happy and well-planned it is. While adding decorations would help, the use of the right outdoor lighting will help boost the appearance of your home.
There are two ways on how you can have great outdoor lighting on your property. Either you hire a professional to plan the layout for you or do it yourself. If you’re leaning toward professional help, ensure you hire the right business like https://oregonoutdoorlighting.com and others, so you can be confident that they’ll be doing a great job. But if you’re leaning toward designing it yourself, you should research thoroughly for safety and maximum output.
Moreover, listed below are the outdoor lighting ideas that can spruce up your home’s exterior:
1. Lanterns
If you’d like your home to look cozy, calming, and romantic, adding lanterns would instantly help boost the mood in your property. A lantern helps provide a relaxing ambiance as it imitates an alternative source of light such as a candle.
You can easily place lanterns in any area of your backyard. You can use it as hanging lights by the front porch, a centerpiece for your outdoor furniture, or you can just scatter them evenly on your lawn, providing a soft and relaxing atmosphere for everyone. There are people who use heat lamps in their bathroom as well to enjoy the bath with mindfulness.
There are plenty of lantern designs you could choose—from traditional metal pieces to wooden and rustic designs. As you add them to your home’s exterior, ensure that it matches the overall theme for a seamless design.
2. String Lights
One of the most popular yet timeless pieces you could add to your home’s exterior is string lights. Not only can they emit the same aura a lantern provides, but they can help provide brighter and clearer lighting for your backyard.
String lights instantly boost the appearance of your home. Apart from making it romantic, it also makes the yard look relaxing and calming, making you in a better mood. Ideally, you should place them across your yard and add as much as you can. You can choose to place them on top of your outdoor seating area to help people appreciate its beauty as they lounge outside.
When going with string lights, ensure you attach them well to sturdy walls and standings. Moreover, you should keep an appropriate distance between each string as they could tangle with each other in case there’s a strong blow of the wind. Ideally, they should be at least a meter apart, depending on how loose or tight you place your lights up in the air.
3. Floor Lamp
While adding plenty of hanging lights will help boost the appearance of your home instantly, you should try to create a perfect balance by adding floor lamps. With this, you’re not only adding brightness into the sky but also with the ground as well, allowing you to highlight your beautiful lawn or landscape design.
Ideally, you should add a floor lamp to emphasize the beauty of your yard. However, you should be careful when adding such as you need to ensure the size matches well with the overall appearance of your yard. While adding some huge floor lamps would look great as you browse through the catalog, they might be blinding when you place them in your small yard. With this, you should ensure the size matches well with your home’s exterior.
4. Landscape Spotlights
If your yard has a beautiful landscape you’re extremely proud of, you shouldn’t hesitate to add landscape spotlights to help emphasize the beauty and hard work you put into your design. In this way, people can appreciate its beauty during the day, and they can also see its beautiful ambiance during the night.
Apart from brightening up your home’s exterior, a good landscape spotlight will help make your property look luxurious, beautiful, and bright. In this way, you’ll get to enjoy and appreciate your backyard more and allow people from outside to see the beauty of your greenery.
5. Staircase Lighting
If your yard has stairs in it as you have an elevated porch, you should never skip on having good staircase lighting. Not only can it help add beauty to your property, but it can also aid in promoting safety as they allow people to go up and down with a clear view even during the night. When you skip on adding staircase lighting, the chances of developing accidents due to falls and slips are high since people can’t see well in the dark. Even if you add plenty of outdoor lighting, a few bulbs won’t hurt.
You can choose to add staircase lighting by the edge of each step, or you can add a single bulb on the side of the walls if your staircase is beside it. In this way, you can guarantee safety and help emphasize the beauty of your home.
6. Pool Lighting
There’s no better way to highlight your backyard than with a well-lit pool. While you already have a pool you can use to hang out with during the day, you should also make it inviting for night swims for your family and friends. In this way, you can allow it to be a fun backyard entertainment area. However, if your pool doesn’t have good lighting, people would think they shouldn’t use it during the night, or it could be scary to swim in the dark.
Apart from inviting over for a night swim, good pool lighting will help emphasize your backyard, especially with clean water and reflective lights they go through. Ideally, you should add pool lighting and allow it to give your backyard a sparkly look.
As you add pool lighting, ensure they’re completely waterproof. Additionally, you should only add enough lighting around the area. While it might be tempting to add maximum light in your pool, it can be uncomfortable to the eyes of everyone as it can be blinding.
7. Floating Pool Lights
Apart from having lights by the side of your pool, you should consider adding floating pool lights to make the place more inviting. However, this might only be advisable if you plan to host a party and not plan on using the pool. While they’re completely waterproof, you still need to take them out of the water if you plan to go for a swim.
Adding floating pool lights can help provide a relaxing or fun environment on your property. Depending on the lighting design you choose, you can emit various atmospheres that you’d like to happen.
If you’d like to give your home a romantic ambiance, you should consider having floating candles or small lanterns around your pool. Ideally, you should go with warm white as the primary color to help provide a relaxing mood. On the other hand, if you’d like to go for a fun and party mood, you should add colored floating balls with various shades as the numerous colors can make the environment look exciting.
8. Outdoor Pendant
Apart from your kitchen and living room, you can use pendant lighting for your exterior as well. However, you might need to place it over the roof, ideally by the porch, for a strong attachment and good ambiance. While some people frown upon adding pendant lights since they feel they’re better indoors, having them outdoors can boost the appearance of your yard.
When adding an outdoor pendant, try to keep it simple and minimalistic as much as possible. Of course, it’d be unideal to add a glass chandelier outside, but you can go for lighting with wooden elements to help emphasize the beauty of your property.
When adding outdoor pendants, ensure you attach them well to your ceiling and blend well with the outdoor environment. Ideally, you should hire a professional to install it for you to ensure it won’t fall off during the windiest days.
9. Path Lights
During the night, you’d want to guide the people walking through your home safely. No one likes exploring a huge backyard in the dark, especially that some people are afraid of stepping into something they can’t clearly see. To allow people to explore your outdoors, you should add path lights that can help highlight the direction people can go to.
Ideally, you could add lights that you mount along the sides of the path, which goes around 15-21 inches tall. You can choose to add them to your backyard, front course, or even to your car garage. Ideally, you should place them near each other to help highlight the proper direction of your yard. You can set them at least two to three feet apart for balance and good highlighting. You don’t want to blind people going from one point to another because you added too many lights.
Conclusion
You shouldn’t limit the beauty of your home’s exterior. Even during the dark, you should emphasize its appearance by adding good outdoor lighting fixtures to it. While they might be a small added cost on your electricity bill, the beauty they can provide is worth it. Moreover, you should also consider looking for outdoor lighting fixtures which can turn themselves up using solar power, allowing you to save energy.
