Five Common Outdoor Lighting Mistakes
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The world of landscape lighting is awash with misinformation that, unfortunately, all too many so-called professionals do little to dispel. Most probably because dissuading people from taking on this area or “rescuing” them from their mistakes serves their bank balances well. So let’s examine some of the better known myths and mistakes.
As you might have guessed, there are many landscape professionals who would prefer that folk continue to believe that installing outdoor lighting is a specialist job. This however is simply not true. Anyone can create fantastic garden lighting if they follow a few straightforward rules. The single best piece of advice for getting a “designer” look in the garden (or in fact anywhere) is to copy like mad. The world is full of gardening programs and magazines and of course gardens – see what appeals to you and just lift the ideas you like best.
The second great myth/mistake that lots of people fall for is the idea that a garden should be lit up like Times Square at night. Please, don’t do this. Outdoor lighting is all about subtlety and mood, suggestions and hints. The aim is to enhance natural features, exaggerating some and playing down others to create the impression that there are two quite distinct gardens – a daytime one and a night time one – not just the daytime one with the lights full on.
Another favorite of the “you can never be too bright” merchants is that landscape lighting should also be extensive. But too many lights destroy the very thing that gives outdoor lighting its unique quality – the darkness.
One of the main attractions of landscape lighting is the way you can suppress features normally visible by day while at the same time draw attention to others that may usually go unnoticed. The technique of creating a quite different night garden of course relies on zones in the garden remaining dark.
Many people appear to believe that because solar lighting uses “free” electricity generated by sunlight then solar lighting itself is free. It’s quite frankly up there with the famous free lunch – there’s always a cost. For solar lights it’s the initial purchase price plus replacement batteries (no, they don’t last forever and neither do most solar light fittings).
Finally there is the Luddite belief that LED landscape lights are not powerful enough. Outdoor LED lighting these days is in fact just as bright as conventional incandescent light bulbs, but with many more advantages. For example: very low running costs, virtually no heat, very long lasting, extremely robust and endless variety in colors and effects.
So to sum up:
you don’t need to pay costly professionals; brightness is not in fact important; nor is quantity; solar lighting is not equivalent to free lighting; LED garden lighting is the future.
For much more information I recommend you read these additional articles that examine LED landscape lighting, and LED garden lights.
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