Enhancing your alfresco space with outdoor garden lighting can transform it into a beautiful haven throughout the year. The type of lighting you choose can have a significant impact on the ambience of your backyard at night. Whether you desire colourful lights to accentuate the trees and plants or warm lighting to illuminate the stairs, it’s crucial to understand the fundamentals of garden lighting to make the perfect selection for your yard.
Discover how to enhance your outdoor living spaces with a well-planned lighting scheme. The following tips detail how to achieve beautiful and functional alfresco lighting, which can improve safety and bring your garden to life at night.
Forward planning
Let’s emphasise the importance of planning ahead for garden lighting. Making sure you have electricity in the right places is a significant first step – even before plants are put in place.
While designing the lighting effects and selecting fittings should come after choosing your garden’s features and plants, power is a prerequisite for light and so needs to be one of your initial priorities before installing your garden lighting such as premium 12V garden spotlights.
Find quality outdoor garden lighting
Choosing durable and well-made fittings for garden lights that can withstand all types of weather conditions is the best option for reliable functionality and longevity. It is recommended to use high-quality materials that are capable of naturally resisting corrosion and can withstand weather extremes.
As well as robust materials, it’s worthwhile investing in energy-efficient low voltage lighting that will leave the power on, but keep your bills down.
Which style suits your garden?
Outdoor light fittings should generally be concealed to focus on the illumination, not the fixture. This is why black or dark grey lights are ideal for alfresco spaces as they don’t reflect light onto themselves. However, there are exceptions like sculptural or festoon lights. The main types of outdoor lighting are as follows:
- Bollard lights: great for illuminating paths or driveways.
- Spotlights: perfect for highlighting architectural features or shooting light up a tree or shrub.
- Deck lights: an aesthetically pleasing way to highlight a deck.
Consider your location
One practical way to choose your lighting is to identify the most attractive features of your garden and areas that need emphasis, such as a beautiful tree or sculpture. Next, establish a hierarchy of lighting to create depth and harmony, considering which tones of light will enhance your chosen features.
Determine if you want to incorporate reflections or lengthen a tree to make a statement. Creating a balanced and pleasant result is about doing less rather than more.
Great outdoor garden lighting should create a comfortable atmosphere instead of being overwhelming. Floodlights, for instance, can be harsh and uncomfortable as they flood the entire garden but subtle 12V garden spotlights are ideal for creating an inviting atmosphere.
Extend your living space
Why invest in attractive outdoor lighting? The main reason is to make your garden a liveable space so it can become an added room to your home. Garden lighting can often be overlooked as a valuable element of interior design, as people tend to only turn their lights on when they’re outside.
However, if your garden is well-lit and you have windows that overlook it, you can easily incorporate it into your living space on a cold winter evening simply by turning on the lights, making it a valuable extension of your home.
Choose superior outdoor garden lighting for your home
Elluminate Lighting provides premium outdoor lighting solutions to suit a range of needs. Proper planning is key when installing an outdoor garden lighting system. Determine which features you want to showcase, such as pathways, plants, BBQ areas, or decking.
Check out the Elluminate ‘Plug n Play’ range of lighting options. Garden Deck lights provide both safety and ambience to your entertainment space. Garden Spotlights can highlight your plants and bollard lights along your pathways can add to the overall atmosphere. Get creative by accentuating your water features or statues.
Browse the range of top-quality aesthetic garden lighting online now, or get in touch with a friendly team member today with any questions.