The front of your home is a canvas. The way you position your lighting impacts how people perceive your property. Properly positioned lighting can highlight the best features of your home. Poorly positioned lighting, on the other hand, can have the opposite effect.
This guide will walk you through some important concepts regarding front-of-house lighting positions. You’ll discover some best practices you should implement and easy-to-avoid lighting mistakes that many educational institutes and homeowners make.
1. Three Rules of Effective Lighting
Uplighting and moonlighting are two ways to highlight tall landscape features in the front of your home. Uplighting involves installing well or directional lights facing upwards under trees or architectural elements. You can use uplighting to accentuate the unique architectural features of your home and add to the ambiance of your property.
The concept of cohesion refers to the overall impression you want to create. To make your lighting design cohesive, you must illuminate the background, intermediate areas, and borders. You should avoid large unlit areas around your home, as your eyes naturally overlook the space. That interrupts the experience.
The next important concept to get to grips with is depth. The front of your home is a three-dimensional environment. You need to place your lighting elements in positions that make the most of your space. You can use high, medium, or low-wattage lights with different spreads to help you make the most of the area.
Finally, when determining the front-of-house lighting positions, consider the focal points of your home. Decide which features you want to draw attention to.
The focal points might be unique features or functional parts of your home. For instance, you might want to highlight a unique water feature. Functional elements of your home include seating areas or the entrance to your house.
2. Use Uplighting and Moonlighting
Uplighting and moonlighting are two ways to highlight tall landscape features in the front of your home. Uplighting involves installing well or directional lights facing upwards under trees or architectural elements. You can use uplighting to accentuate the unique architectural features of your home and add to the ambiance of your property.
You can uplight trees, walls, the main house, and other architectural and landscape elements around your property.
Moonlighting, meanwhile, mimics the effect of the moon spilling onto a property. You can create dappled shadows on the lawn by placing a light on a tree facing down. You can use our CAST Classic Tree Light to create this effect.
Moonlighting provides soft illumination over large parts of your property and minimizes dark patches. Ideally, the lighting fixtures should be at least 25 feet high and preferably attached to a tree with a canopy. That way, you’ll create a dappled effect on the ground. Moonlighting is ideal for adding soft lighting to pathways, gardens, outdoor living areas, and yards.
3. Use Silhouetting, Shadowing, and Grazing
You can also use uplighting to highlight exterior walls and objects located close to them. There are various ways to utilize uplighting for this purpose, including silhouetting, shadowing, and grazing.
Silhouetting involves casting an even light on an exterior wall from a wide angle. You can create a bright backdrop for an object by positioning the light between a feature and the wall. A plain, untextured wall will yield the best results for this method.
Shadowing involves creating patterns on walls by illuminating an object. It is a nice way to illuminate shrubbery and other objects that are low to the ground. You can use shadowing to accentuate decorative features like sculptures, fountains, and other garden features.
Shadowing is particularly useful for houses with untextured exterior walls or vinyl siding, as shadows break the monotony.
Finally, grazing involves using an acutely-angled light against the wall. Most grazing lights are set one foot from the wall, with the fixture tilted some distance from the wall to reduce hot spots. Grazing is especially effective with irregular surfaces such as river stones as it produces interesting shadow patterns.
You can use our CAST Craftsman Series Bronze Spot Light, CAST Classic MR-11 Bullet Light, or our CAST Classic MR-16 Bullet Light to achieve any of these effects.
4. Ensure Your Path Lights Illuminate Downward
The paths that cross your property are a natural feature of the front of your home that you will want to illuminate. You can make your property attractive using strategically positioned path lights.
You should place your path lights evenly on both sides of the path. Traditional path and driveway lights with domes will direct the lighting downwards, which is essential. You don’t want to be blinded by lights when looking where to place your feet.
Our CAST Classic Small China Hat Area Path Light has a dome. You can also use directional path lights like the CAST Classic MR-16 Path Light, which has an adjustable shroud facing down.
5. Don’t Leave Your Wiring Exposed
Wiring can pose a fire or electrical hazard if left exposed. Harsh weather conditions can make the exterior coating brittle, while wild animals or pets can chew away at the insulation. In addition, exposed wiring can also cause accidents. To prevent these scenarios from happening, bury your wiring.
Most reputable lighting designers use tin-coated marine-grade wire. The National Electrical Code recommends encasing wire in a non-metallic conduit made from a material such as PVC and burying it at a depth of 18 inches below the soil surface.
If you wish to use a rigid metal conduit, a depth of 6 inches will suffice. You can also create a special mounting base for your outdoor wiring. This hides all your wires neatly in a metal or plastic mounting base.
6. Don’t point lighting fixtures directly at doors or windows
Avoid pointing your outdoor light fixtures directly at doors or windows. Pointing a light at your doors or windows can severely affect visibility. The glare will make it difficult for you to see outside, and the backlighting can prevent you from spotting suspicious objects or figures lurking in darker areas.
Instead of pointing light sources directly at doors or windows, we suggest positioning them at an angle. Additionally, be mindful not to point your lights at your neighbors’ gardens or windows. You don’t want to antagonize your neighbors with your lighting.
Summing Up
In this guide, we shared six lighting tips. Consider concepts like focal points, cohesion, and depth when designing your lighting plan. You can also use outdoor lighting ideas such as moonlighting, uplighting, silhouetting, and more to illuminate your home or outdoor living space.
Our CAST line of pathway lights, step lights, directional lights, wash light fixtures, and accent lighting allow you to accentuate different features of your home, such as exterior walls, trees, bushes, and more.
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