Everybody loves pro tips. You feel like you suddenly have an edge — the elusive secrets that will make your neighbors gawk in envy at your sheer wizardry.
When it comes to landscape lighting design in Orlando, FL, you want all the pro tips you can get. This isn’t really a job for newbies.
Here’s your crash course in landscape lighting design bright ideas.
Landscape Lighting Design Tips:
1. One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Love the landscape lighting design in the yard down the street? If you just copy it, your yard will look great too, right?
Nope.
Their landscaping is unique. And so is yours.
Expert landscape lighting should be suited to your landscaping’s exact needs.
The best landscape lighting design companies in Orlando, FL take into account your home’s unique architecture, your flowers, trees, and shrubs, your pergola, patio, or pool, and light it all subtly and expertly so it doesn’t look “lit” — it just looks great.
2. Landscape Lighting Design Idea: Light What You Love
Light the stuff you want to show off: architectural features like stone veneer, arches, and columns.
Love that Sylvester Date Palm? That was a real landscape investment, right? Light it from below to show off its impressive diamond-cut trunk.
Have a stunning flowering hedge of Ixora? Light it after dark with strategic lighting that highlights those cool tubular blooms.
3. Less Lighting is More
If a few lights are good, lots of lights are even better, right?
That’s a big no.
If you light your whole house and spotlight every tree, plant, and paver, nothing stands out as special. All that light will just wash out your yard. (And tick off your neighbors.)
Take a little field trip to a home in your neighborhood that you think has beautiful landscape lighting.
Notice the play of light and shadow. Check out how only the best, most interesting features stand out.
They didn’t light everything.
4. Don’t Forget Function
It’s easy to get carried away with lighting your great new pergola, your stand-out palm, that stunning arched entryway.
But remember landscape lighting isn't just pretty, it’s practical.
Can you see well enough to walk from your car to your front porch? From your deck to your fire pit? From your kitchen door to the recycling bin out back?
Focus on function, too.
5. Use Uplighting
Uplighting trees from below makes a stunning impact, but plants at the base of the tree can obscure the light.
Pro tip: Put the light fixtures on risers so they clear the foliage.
6. Driveway Lighting Dos and Dont’s
The right driveway lighting keeps you and your visitors safe, prevents accidents, deters intruders, and can actually boost your curb appeal.
But there are some tricks to it.
Professional landscape lighting design services in Orlando use lighting to define your driveway’s borders, mark the end so people can easily see where to enter, and guide foot traffic from your driveway to your front or side door.
If trees line your driveway, they’ll use uplighting to highlight them. That accentuates your landscaping and helps illuminate your driveway at the same time.
Illuminate the edge of the driveway, so people know where it is and won’t trip and fall.
7. Use Landscape Lighting Zones
Consider a landscape lighting system with separate zones you can control. That lets you put your front yard on its own timer, to stay on longer than your backyard, maybe, or turn off sooner.
8. Use Staggered Walkway Lighting
It’s tempting to line up your walkway and path lights, evenly spaced like soldiers.
But they look better staggered along paths, not all lined up. You want to welcome people with your impressive design skills, not encourage airplanes to use your yard as a runway.
Landscape lighting design companies also know to avoid those lantern-style lights lining your paths. All you see is the bulb, so you have a bunch of bright dots in your landscape.
Instead, choose fixtures with caps that direct the light down, so you don’t see the fixture or bulb — you just see nice light illuminating your path.
9. Landscape Lighting Design Tip: Think Twice About DIY
DIY landscape lighting is trickier than it looks.
Can you position the lights so they don’t cause annoying glare for your neighbors?
Is uplighting best for a certain spot? Or downlighting?
Do you really want to spend time studying lumen output, color temperature, and beam spread? (You could be out enjoying your backyard.)
A good landscape lighting professional already knows this stuff.
We’d love to help you do it right.
Trust Your Orlando Landscape Lighting Design to Ground Source
Nobody expects you to be a landscape lighting design expert.
There’s a lot involved, from color temperature to proper placement to choosing just the right fixtures.
Questions? Just ask.
We’re happy to tell you more about how we can transform your yard with professional, expert landscape lighting design in Orlando, FL.
We’re landscape lighting experts, but our skills don’t stop there. We’re with you every step of the way as you plan your perfect outdoor space.
Sod, irrigation, landscape design: Let us transform your yard from an embarrassing eyesore to a place you spend every spare minute.
Are you ready to enjoy the vibrant, impressive yard you've always wanted? Request a quote today! We’ll help you review your options and then transform your property.
