09 Nov Lighting your garden for winter
As winter approaches, thoughts turn to lighting gardens for safety, security, and winter interest. Here’s our guide to lighting your garden for winter.
Designing your garden lighting
There are so many options for lighting your garden for winter that a person could easily get very confused. So before you brief your landscaper or your electrician, it’s important to think very carefully about what you want to achieve with garden lighting. Wish lists commonly include
- Security lighting
- Driveway and entranceway lighting to welcome you home
- Ensuring that potential trip hazards like steps are easy to see
- Making the journey to and from your home office more pleasurable
- Giving you a wonderful view of the garden from inside the house
- Enticing you outdoors to enjoy the garden at night
- Creating a lovely ambiance for outdoor seating and dining areas
- Lighting trees to accentuate shape and form
- Illuminating water features
- Highlighting particular planting arrangements and/or garden features
Will you use coloured lights in different parts of the garden? Some schemes allow you to change the lighting hues from an app on your smartphone.
I can’t stress enough, the importance of keeping garden lighting simple. Too many bright lights and too many colours and you end up with a sensory overload that is not at all relaxing. Consider your neighbours too – how will they react to your lighting plan?
Planning your garden lighting
Once you know roughly where you will be placing your garden lights, you need to think about the wiring.
Will you want all of the lights to come on at once, or do you plan on creating independently lit zones within the garden? For example, do you need the patio light to come on at the same time as the driveway lights, or should the two be separate entities? These lighting zones will dictate how the wires and cables will be arranged.
If your outdoor lighting is to be installed as part of a landscaping project, your landscaper will see to it that wiring, cables, sensors, and controllers are all discreetly integrated into the landscaping. Retrofitted lighting schemes are sometimes a little bit trickier to disguise.
Types of outdoor light fittings
Choosing the fittings is an important part of designing your garden lighting. Low-level lighting creates a great ambiance and is ideal for delineating paths and steps. Recessed lighting is awesome for patios and decks – it gives a lovely warm glow without dazzling anyone and is fantastic for creating a gentle ambiance. For outdoor eating areas or that narrow passage between the garage and the back door, wall lights are fabulous. Spike lights will illuminate garden features such as plants or trees and are also great for driveways.
At Holland Landscapes, we never hesitate to recommend Hunza light fittings. We love that the lights are so well made and that they carry a lifetime guarantee.
Installing your garden lighting
Any reputable landscaper will be sure to comply with CDM regulations for installing your garden lighting. As it is illegal in the UK for anybody but a qualified electrician to install outdoor electrical fittings, your landscaper will consult with experts before laying cable and placing the fittings. He or she will then hire a suitably qualified electrician to do the final install and bring your garden lighting to life.
Help with garden lighting
Garden lighting is an investment and can truly make your life easier. From driveway lighting to guide you home and make you feel safe whilst unloading the car, through to tastefully lit trees to bring interest to your evenings, Holland Landscapes are here to help and advise.
Contact us if you need help creating a lighting plan and/or re-landscaping areas in your garden to make the most of all that garden lighting has to offer.
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