Increase Your Home’s Curb Appeal With Outdoor Lighting

When twilight comes, and the sun is out of the sky’s view, your nighttime curb appeal becomes an important factor. Unfortunately, if your home’s outdoors doesn’t have adequate lighting, it can really cast a dark mood. Not only that, your landscape lacks the security that it should. If you’re looking for ways to increase your home’s nighttime curb appeal, outdoor lighting is the answer.

Outdoor Lighting is Part of Every Great Landscape Design

No doubt, you’ve worked hard to select the beautiful shrubs, flowers, plants, and trees that are all part of your landscape. But, all too often, homeowners forget about the one aspect to make it all come together — landscape lighting.

When night falls, you need proper lighting to prevent your landscape design from disappearing altogether.

There’s nothing like a subtle glow of light to create a welcoming sense within your landscape.

Here are some easy ways to increase your evening curb appeal and add to its beauty.

Spotlight to accentuate and illuminate.

Spotlighting is also known as accent lighting. It’s one of the most common ways to accentuate the landscape design of your home’s exterior. You can highlight larger trees, statuaries, and your home’s architectural elements.

You can use different fixtures and bulbs for each highlighted area to create a mélange of effects. Choose in-ground lights for uplighting trees while also adding curb and safety appeal during the dark of night.

Add a moonlight effect.

Outdoor lighting design is just like any area of design. Its success will depend on the execution of the lighting design. Creating a moonlight effect lends a natural look to your outdoor lighting reminiscent of one a full moon would create. It creates gorgeous shadows and highlights throughout your landscape.

Creating a moonlight effect usually begins at the entranceway to make focal points in the landscape.

You can highlight trees from below or within the tree itself to create a stunning effect. Uplighting also creates a dramatic effect and highlights your landscaping and architectural features beautifully.

It’s also good to have a variety of fixtures to add to a foundation of spotlights and floodlights. These include step lights, post lights, bollards, and more. And while some homeowners love to use a cascade of colors, the most experienced designers prefer warm white light.

Illuminate steps and walkways.

If you entertain a lot, a lit walkway during the nighttime hours creates an inviting path. But lighting pathways is a technical skill that not everyone masters correctly.

There are different types of pathway lighting. Take, for example, smaller globe lights on the sides of the pathway. Or an arbor where you can decorate with string lights to create an ambiance that guests and onlookers can admire. Lights can also be hidden in the midst of your landscape’s flowers and foliage.

The lighting should fit the architectural style of your house. A landscape lighting designer can help you develop the perfect outdoor lighting plan to achieve just the right effects. One of the key things to remember is avoiding putting lights too close and not overdoing things. Less is best on this occasion.

Add solar lights and LED to add to your lighting’s energy efficiency.

Here in Houston, we’re fortunate to receive more sun than the northern part of the U.S., especially in the wintertime.

If you have an area of the landscape that gets more than eight hours of sun a day, think about adding solar lights or LED lights for illuminating pathways and walkways. Lighting designers today prefer LED lighting. They’re easy to install and last 40,000 hours or more.

Great areas of focus are an entertaining area or where you and your guests dine outdoors. Add them by the multiples wherever you want or need bright light.

The Takeaway

Smart landscape lighting choices can ramp up your Houston home’s evening curb appeal. Outdoor lighting also helps make your landscape safer as it illuminates patios, pathways, and areas frequently traveled by foot at night.

You can kick things up a notch by using LED bulbs, which help keep costs down and reduce the energy output.

If you really want to take your outdoor lighting to the next level, consult a lighting professional. So many elements of lighting really are all about design.

Our landscape lighting designers are the best in their profession. We’ve worked with homeowners throughout Southeast Texas to give them the landscape lighting design of their dreams. Give us a call today at 713-863-1133 to set up your outdoor lighting consultation.