Landscape Lighting Color Guide | Find the Perfect Hue for Your Yard

Landscape lighting is an essential part of any backyard landscape. Many homeowners find that it helps enhance the beauty of their backyard, provide additional protection, and increase property value. However, which kind of landscape lighting should you get for your yard? How do you know which one is best? You can use this article as a helpful guide to find the perfect type of landscape lighting that fits your needs!

Landscape Lighting Color Temperatures & Its Impact

Understanding Color Temperature

One key aspect of landscape lighting is color temperature. Color temperature is a characteristic of light that describes the color appearance, measured in Kelvin (K). It determines whether a light should appear warm, yellowish, or cool bluish. For landscaping, color temperatures can range from warm white (2700k-3500K) to natural white (4000k-4500K) and cool white (5000k-6500K). Finding the perfect balance of color temperature for your landscape can completely transform the overall appearance and ‘vibe’ your yard brings.

What Do You Want Your Lighting to Do?

Now that you have a better understanding of the importance of color temperature in landscape lighting, how can you determine which is the best for you? First, you’ll want to prioritize this: Do you want landscape lighting for security….or aesthetics? Determining your main goal for your landscape lighting will affect where you place your lights, the desired color temperature to align with your goals, and what types of lights you get.

For example, you might want a landscape that highlights the aspects of your yard you’re most proud of, deters thieves, or helps increase your yard’s visibility so you and any guests you have over can see where you’re walking. Once you determine your goals, it’ll make the planning a whole lot easier.

Types of Lights for Landscape Lighting

Types of Aesthetic Lighting to Enhance Beauty

Once you’ve decided if you want lights for practical or aesthetic purposes, it’s time to decide which lights you want. Spotlights are a popular landscape lighting option. They provide focused, intense light to highlight the best features of your landscape, like trees, statues, or bushes. You can adjust them at any angle, but they can create harsh shadows if you don’t position them carefully. Uplights are another promising option, but they are best used for tree canopies or tall structures since they will create a glare if they are improperly shielded. Wash lights help give off soft, diffuse light that will help illuminate flat surfaces like fences, walls, or garden beds. However, they are unsuitable for highlighting specific areas since they have a broad beam. If you have a pool, you can consider underwater lights! They can dramatically affect any water features like pools, fountains, and ponds. It won’t just enhance the look of your water feature but can also provide visibility around a pool so you don’t take an accidental dip into the pool.

Lighting for Your Yard’s Visibility and Security

If you’re looking for a practical way to increase nighttime visibility and security for your yard, we recommend path lights. Path lights will help illuminate the pathways in your yard, which will help you avoid tripping and falling off the path at night. If you don’t have backyard paths, floodlights are a promising alternative. They can provide broad, even illumination over areas as large as driveways and lawns. They require fewer fixtures and are great if you value practicality over looks. If you have outdoor steps, you can use step lights to help avoid falling. If you want an energy-efficient option that effectively deters burglars, motion-activated lights will do the job. Any potential burglars will be startled and retreat before even reaching your home.

Extra Tips On How to Create Dynamic Landscape Lighting Designs

Another helpful tip that will help create dynamic landscape lighting is to use multiple landscape lighting options. Who said you need to choose just one? For example, you can utilize the uplighting and downlighting techniques. Use uplighting to help highlight trees, architectural features, or garden sculptures. Then, use downlighting to mimic natural moonlight over seating areas and pathways. When positioning the lights, you can make them cast shadows to create silhouettes against walls and fences. You can even shine some spotlights onto an area covered by flood lights to add depth to your landscape lighting terrain. Please don’t be shy to leave your lights in their default lighting setting. You can get creative! Once you’ve strategically placed your landscape lighting where you want, you can adjust the brightness and lighting. Play around with the color temperatures to create the ideal cozy atmosphere. For one gathering, if you’re having a party, you can have a nice cool white color temperature so crowds of people can see where they’re going and avoid collisions. Or, if you want a nice, romantic dinner outside, you can change the lighting setting to a nice, warm white color temperature to help set the mood. The possibilities are endless!

Conclusion:

Our guide has provided you with great ideas for your landscape lighting project. However, it can be tricky to pinpoint the exact look you want your lighting to achieve for your yard. You might also not know how to install the certain type of light, or lights, that you want. Luckily, we at Perfection Lawn & Landscape can help you! With our experience in landscape design, we can craft outdoor living spaces that will perfectly suit your needs. We don’t just design landscapes for a living; we design landscapes meant FOR living in! You can contact us today if you have more questions regarding landscape lighting. We’ll be happy to help you!