Landscape Lighting Orlando is not only functional for safety and security purposes, but can add an element of drama to your home’s nighttime appearance. Adding a few lights can create shadow effects to make a trellis stand out, or brighten an area where you’ve had a problem with tripping and falling over debris.
Path Lighting
Path lighting illuminates walkways, garden paths and patios with subtle illumination. This style of lighting offers guidance and safety while enhancing the beauty of your landscape design at night.
Unlike downlighting, which emphasizes “moonlight” effects, path lighting is focused on illuminating pathways to ensure that people can walk and navigate safely at night. In addition, a well-illuminated pathway provides a welcoming, warm environment for guests to your home.
Like other landscape lights, path lights come in a variety of styles to match your space. They can be found in sets, which offer convenience and cost savings. Mixing fixtures from different sets can work, but the best path lights tend to have a common design so that they look cohesive. The fixtures should also be spaced far enough apart to avoid looking like a row of little Tin Soldiers along your pathway.
Some path lights are also designed to make a statement. These decorative styles are often larger in size and more ornate in appearance than their classic counterparts. They can be used to draw attention to specific landscape elements, such as fountains or trees.
In addition to selecting the right fixture for your needs, you should also consider your installation method. Path lights can be hardwired or self-powered (no wiring necessary). Choosing an installer that specializes in path lighting will help ensure a quality installation and a design that is tailored to your unique space.
If you opt for a hardwired system, keep in mind that your installer may run into obstacles as they dig trenches to place the pathway lights. They could encounter concrete or tree roots, which can add time and expense to the project.
Regardless of the type of installation you choose, there are many features available to enhance the effectiveness of your path lighting. These include photocells, motion sensors and scheduling options to control your path lights at night. Some lights are even equipped with LED technology, which uses less energy than traditional bulbs. This is a great way to save money and conserve energy! These bulbs last much longer than traditional bulb types as well, so you’ll be able to enjoy your path lights for years to come.
Uplighting
Uplighting in landscape lighting is a dramatic way to accent trees and other features that rise above ground. It can also be used to show off unique hardscape or softscape elements such as a gazebo, wall sculpture or fountain. This is a great option for homeowners who want to create an inviting and dramatic outdoor living space that will impress guests and increase their home’s value when it comes time to sell.
When uplighting a tree or other feature, it is important to use fixtures with the right color temperature. A warmer light is better suited to oak trees and brown siding, while cooler colors like whites or blues are typically preferred in more modern landscapes. It’s also critical to choose the correct placement of your uplighting. Too close and you risk glare; too far and it could overpower the feature.
Depending on your lighting needs, uplighting can be achieved with spot lights, recessed lights or well lights. It’s also possible to combine uplighting with downlighting in your design for a more subtle and interesting effect. The main difference between uplighting and downlighting is that with uplighting, the fixtures are placed below or at ground level and shine upwards whereas downlighting uses fixtures placed higher up, usually in the branches of the tree or under the eaves of your house.
If you’re looking for a reputable company that offers landscape lighting in Orlando, be sure to ask how many customers they have and what their experience was like. A company with a lot of positive reviews is a good sign that they treat their clients well and have a good reputation in the industry.
It’s also a good idea to ask what kind of equipment they have on hand. Most landscaping lighting companies will have a wide selection of different light fixtures, so they should be able to offer you a range of options to suit your budget. In addition, it’s a good idea to find out whether they have a designer on staff, as they can help you get the look that you want for your landscape lighting design.
Accent Lighting
If you have a beautiful garden, trees, statues or other landscape features that deserve extra attention, you can use accent lighting to highlight them in the dark. It’s a great way to add a personal touch and make your property stand out from the rest of the neighborhood.
This type of lighting highlights features with narrow beams that illuminate specific areas of the landscape. The brightness, color and warmth of the light can be adjusted to suit your style and ambiance preferences.
There are a number of different types of lights that can be used in this category, including spotlights, pier and deck lights, and hardscape lights. They are typically installed in the ground or on a structure like a fountain, gazebo or statue. The wide variety of options makes it easy to find the perfect fixture for your space.
For example, if you have a wrought iron fence that you’d like to highlight, you can use an LED low voltage brass up light with a narrow lens to focus the light on the fence. The same is true of outdoor sculptures and other architectural features that you’d like to showcase in the night.
Depending on the desired effect, you can also choose to use spotlights with a wider beam spread to wash walls and facades of structures with light. They’re also perfect for illuminating specimen trees or any plants that you want to draw attention to.
Hardscape lights are another newer option. These are small fixtures that can be installed in or on the ground to wash a wall or surface with light. They’re also ideal for highlighting garden areas, ponds and other water features, or creating a moon-lit effect on pathways.
A professional installation is important for this type of lighting. In the worst-case scenario, improperly buried or connected wiring can cause fire hazards. On a less serious note, you could also end up with fixtures that don’t illuminate well or look the way you’d like them to. If you have a complex outdoor space, it’s usually best to leave the lighting installation to professionals.
Flood Lighting
When it comes to lighting your property with landscape lights, there is a wide variety of options. Understanding the different approaches and effects used by your lighting designer can help you choose what is best for your needs.
One common technique is to use a mix of uplighting and flood lighting. This helps highlight the architectural features of a building or landscape and creates a layered effect that looks attractive. This type of lighting is most often used to draw attention to statues or other outdoor art, as well as illuminating outdoor walls and fencing.
LED landscape flood lights are also an excellent choice for uplighting techniques that call for a wider light spread than spotlights. These include moon lighting, cross lighting, mirror lighting and wash lighting. These lighting techniques use directional lights pointing in opposite directions to accentuate distinct plants and trees, add depth to walls or fences, elicit the tranquil effect of light filtering through tree branches, or simply add interest to your home or garden.
Landscape flood lights are also a great choice for uplighting large or broad plant canopies or even a tree trunk or limbs. They can be used to uplight an entire grove of trees or to illuminate a large outdoor structure such as a shed, fence, pool house, patio or porch. These lights are also ideal for the lighting techniques grazing and silhouetting, which create the illusion of dimension and depth by using a combination of directional and general illumination.
While a floodlight will brighten a relatively large area, it usually requires only several fixtures to do so and does not produce an effect that is as attractive as the more focused illumination of spot lights. This makes them an effective option for a number of landscaping and safety applications, such as illuminating a sign or wide areas around a tree canopy.
A low voltage floodlight can be mounted with a variety of mounting accessories, including ground stakes, surface mount flanges and guardian mount brackets. These fixtures are also compatible with a variety of photo sensors that can be added to your system, automatically turning them on at dusk and off again at dawn.