Create a Landscape Lighting Design in 3 Easy Steps

As you make plans to spend time in your yard each spring, make sure that your outdoor space provides adequate lighting. The right lighting design highlights your beautiful landscape and creates the perfect place for entertaining guests or relaxing. With plug-and-play options and low-voltage systems available, it’s easy to elevate your landscape. These three easy steps will help you design your landscape lighting and create the perfect outdoor oasis. 

Before you begin your landscape lighting design, ensure you know the characteristics and differences between common outdoor landscape lights. Each light fixture is best suited for specific tasks, and understanding when and where to use them is essential.

Outdoor lighting falls into two main categories: decorative and functional. Decorative lighting highlights parts of your landscape that you want to draw the eye to. This can include pointing lights at flowers and bushes in your garden, uplighting a tree, or illuminating parts of your pond. Functional lighting, on the other hand, combines safety and task lighting, such as path lights or deck and step lights. These lights will provide enough visibility to help you access parts of your outdoor space at night safely.

• On the ground: Illuminate key parts of your landscape such as trees, plants, statues, flags, and bushes with spot lights, flood lights, and well lights. Outdoor spot lights come with an adjustable base or a ground stake to aim the ligh where needed. For larger objects, opt for a flood light with a wide beam angle. If you want a more covert light, try in-ground well lights, which are installed in the ground and shoot light upwards.
• Overhead: Add outdoor string lights to your patio, gazebo, or pergola to create a well-lit and decorative sitting space. These lights can be mounted in various ways to fit your installation needs.
• Underwater: Add lighting underwater with waterproof light fixtures. These lights are fully submersible and provide decorative lighting to your ponds, fountains, and other wet locations, allowing you to watch fish swim at night or simply enjoy how your light reflects on the water.

• Illuminate Your Deck: Installing deck and step lights brightens up the space, adds visibility, and increases the decorative touch. Eyelid surface-mounted fixtures aim light downward to brighten up your patio walkways and steps without a harsh glare. Recessed step lights install flush with your deck and are available in various shapes, faceplate styles, and colors to seamlessly tie into your patio design. For rail lighting or step lighting, weatherproof LED strip lights are a great option. Strip lights come with various color temperatures, RGB colors, and brightness options so you can customize your lighting according to your needs. Their flexible nature allows you to install them around curves and corners.

• Increase Visibility for Pathways: Install path lights around your walkways, driveways, and in gardens or mulch beds for increased accessibility and visibility. These lights come in different decorative styles, such as cones and bollards, to match your design aesthetic. If you want even more energy efficiency, consider using solar-powered path lights.

• Highlight Features: Installing hardscape lights on your stone stairways and retaining walls is another great way to add functional lighting to your outdoor lighting design. These fixtures come with the required hardware to mount these lights on tough surfaces.

Modern LED landscape light fixtures come in various color temperatures, colors, and brightness options. Correlated color temperature, or CCT, refers to the shade of white light emitted. Different CCTs are best for certain applications. Warm white light creates a comfortable, relaxing atmosphere, while cool white light is best suited for security lighting. RGB landscape lights are perfect for a creative and dynamic outdoor space. A combination of different colors creates an exciting environment and helps your house stand out. Lights with multiple RGB color-changing options are an ideal choice for holiday lighting; change your lights to display red and green for Christmas or purple and orange for Halloween. Finally, select lights with an appropriate lumen output for your intended application. You could choose a different brightness depending on the size of the object or area you want to highlight.

Once you know the parts of your landscape to illuminate, decide the placement and arrangement of fixtures. The best landscape light designs use a combination of lights to achieve the desired effect. For example, you can use both spot lights and well lights in garden beds for brightening different types of flowers and bushes. Be sure to leave enough space between your fixtures to see the effect of each light. Consider using different landscape lighting techniques to create dimension and depth in your space. Techniques like shadowing, silhouette lighting, and down-lighting can add a dramatic look. Or for a traditional approach, incorporate up-lighting, moon-lighting, and grazing into your design. 

Once you have a general idea of where you’ll install the lights, make a sketch of your layout and wiring for a reference point for future changes. If you plan to wire fixtures like lamp poles or high-voltage lights, follow the NEC rules for buried outdoor wires. Look at the distance between where you want to install your light and the object you wish to light up. If the fixture will be placed far away, consider a higher-lumen bulb. 

If you choose solar-powered fixtures or lights with a built-in photocell, ensure the solar panel and sensor have enough direct access to sunlight. Solar-powered lights can store more energy if placed in direct sunlight, so the placement of these lights is important when considering the performance of your light. Outdoor fixtures with photocells should avoid being placed in the shade so they don’t register the dim environment as being nighttime. Proper access to sunlight ensures your lights turn on only when necessary, reducing energy costs.   

What Are the Advantages to Using LEDs for Residential Landscaping Lighting?

LEDs provide significantly more benefits than halogen and incandescent lights. These lights have high energy efficiency, ensuring your lights have improved longevity, requiring fewer replacements and less maintenance. These factors, combined with lower electricity bills, will save you money over time. 

Do I Need to Do Certain Wiring for My Landscape Lights? 

There are various wiring methods for wiring your landscape lights, depending on the setup you prefer, with benefits to each. 

Will I Need a Transformer for My Landscape Lighting? 

A transformer should be used for low-voltage landscape lighting. Landscape lighting transformers convert high-voltage currents to low-voltage currents, ideal for landscape lights operating with voltages ranging from 12 VAC to 22 VAC. The right transformer for your application depends on the number of fixtures in a run, the needed output voltage, whether you want an integrated photocell or timer, and more.

Can I Install Landscape Lights Myself? 

Yes, once you understand the fixtures you need and the layout, you can install residential landscape lighting yourself. However, for additional information or assistance in selecting the fixtures you need, contact our team of product support specialists by calling 866-590-3533 or by filling out our contact form. Or for more information about a specific product, you can refer to the User Manual for installation and safety tips. 

Ready for the next step in creating your outdoor lighting design? Check out our article on Planning for an LED Landscape Lighting Installation. Or, browse our full line of LED landscape lights.