As you’re contemplating your dream outdoor living space in Mecklenburg County, VA, you may be focused on all the sunny days you’ll be spending relaxing on your patio. In order to make the most of your newly renovated landscape, it’s important to choose a landscape design that also looks good at night. Since there seems to be an endless number of outdoor lighting options, here are some ideas for making the right choices.
Imagining Your Dream Outdoor Space
Creating your landscape design is a work of art. It’s the perfect opportunity to create your ideal environment and extension of your living space. A well-designed outdoor space becomes the perfect place to relax, recharge, and make memories with friends and family.
When thinking about your outdoor lighting, imagine how you’d want your landscape to look at night. You can incorporate features into your outdoor spaces that will look good with outdoor lightings, such as a pergola draped with lights, a majestic outdoor fireplace, or special tree that appears to shine with moonlight but is actually artificially glowing. It can also be helpful to think about this as you observe other houses and notice which aspects you’d like to recreate for your landscape design.
Highlighting Natural Features
This is one of the key elements of creating a good outdoor lighting design. Outdoor lighting at night gives you a new opportunity to highlight the natural beauty of your landscape design in a way that you may not see in the daytime.
You can highlight certain plants in your outdoor space, using strategies like uplighting to light up entire trees, or shadowing to highlight the shapes of certain plants against the walls of your outdoor area. You can even add special features like submerged light in your pond, to emphasize the unique beauty of your space.
Illuminating Walkways and Entrances
Lighting walkways is important for safety. It also adds order and coherence to your overall landscape design, showing you and your guests where to go, and can help to connect different features of your outdoor area when full visibility is not possible. When choosing your landscape design, it’s a good idea to consider how these features will fit together with your lighting to create a coherent look.
The lighting used for the front yard is also essential. When done right, this lighting creates a warm feeling that will invite guests toward your beautiful home.
Ambient Lighting
This type of light is important for areas like patio seating or outdoor kitchens, where you’ll want the entire space to be well-lit. After all, if it’s designated as one of the most important areas of your home, the patio can become the place where you’ll want to spend most of your time, as it can serve as an extra “room” on your property.
Make a Plan
Now that you have an idea of what you’d like your overall outdoor space to look like, and some of the different outdoor lighting strategies that can be used to extend the amount of time you can spend enjoying your landscape, the possibilities are practically endless. Of course, you’ll work with your landscapers to design exactly what your space will look like, but it can be helpful to have some ideas beforehand as well. That way, you can communicate your vision to the professionals, who will work closely with you to turn your outdoor living dreams into reality
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