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Outdoor lighting enhances the beauty of your property, makes your home safer and more secure, and increases the number of pleasurable hours you spend outdoors.
Exterior lighting draws your eye outward, creating visual expansion and continuity between the indoors and outdoors.
fixtures shown: Valley 4705 VK, Saturn 1908 VK
A well-lighted front entrance enables you to greet guests and identify visitors. Wall lanterns on each side of the door will give your home a warm, welcoming look while assuring the safety of those who enter. Under a porch or other overhang you can use chain-hung lanterns or flush mounts. A separate rear or side entrance can be lighted with a single wall lantern installed on the keyhole side of the door.
- TIP: Coordinate the style of your outdoor lighting fixtures with the style of your home's exterior. Creating a unified look on the outside makes a sharp first impression, and leaves room for variety on the inside.
- TIP: When choosing bulbs for your outdoor lanterns, remember, less is more. Ambience can be created inside and out.
- TIP: Dimmer controls aren't just for chandeliers and other interior lighting. Fitting your outdoor fixtures with dimmer controls will give you the flexibility to design a lighting plan with multiple uses and decorative effects.
Loving Outdoor Living
The trend toward a fashionable outdoor living space is not just for the “rich and famous”. With the advent of stylish and affordable all-weather furnishings, fabrics and appliances, outdoor living is popular with a broad range of consumers.
With landscape lighting you can make your home stand out in your neighborhood, improve safety and security and expand your outdoor entertaining options.
When lighting is used to enhance these outdoor living quarters, the effect is all the more dramatic, and it's a large part of completing the experience. In newer homes, many builders are now designing wider exterior doorways that tie the indoors and outdoors more closely together. Outdoor furniture is being upgraded to look more like interior furniture, and materials are keeping pace, making the creation of these outdoor havens more practical.
- TIP: Steps, paths and driveways should be illuminated to make sure family members and guests are able to move about easily and safely after dark.
- TIP: Low-level path lights spread circular patterns of light and will brighten your walkway while highlighting nearby flower beds, shrubs and ground cover.
- TIP: Decks, porches and patios can be converted into evening retreats by concealing low-voltage lights under steps, railings or benches.
Sources, pages 213-214: Lighting/A Design Source Book, Elizabeth Wilhide, Stewart, Tabori & Chang - The American Lighting Association