Illuminate your outdoor space for beauty, function, or both. Whether you want to set the mood for entertaining or illuminate a path for safety, there’s a landscape light for every purpose.
Unlike DIY lighting at big box stores, these lamp-ready fixtures allow you to customize brightness (lumens), color temperature, and beam spread. The recessed design eliminates glare, and they’re easy to install. Contact Miami Landscape Lighting today!
- Uplighting
A great landscape lighting design illuminates natural and artificial features to create a soft, warm glow that enhances the appearance of your home and yard. These effects are created by combining different types of illumination, including uplighting and downlighting. Uplighting is the simplest way to highlight a tree or feature at night and works well in most situations. Uplighting can showcase unique tree bark or branch patterns, accentuate your favorite plant or tree, or draw attention to hardscape elements such as fountains and statues.
Uplighting is also great for showing off your architectural features at night. For example, uplighting on a wall can show off the texture and color of stucco or brick and bring out shadows that create a dramatic look. The same effect can be achieved with permanent and semi-permanent installations, such as retaining walls or flagpoles.
When choosing uplighting for your property, it’s important to consider the color temperature of the light you use. For the most attractive uplighting experience, you’ll want to use low-wattage bulbs close in color to the natural hue of your landscape. Warmer colors, such as softer yellows and reds, work best with oak trees, brown landscaping stones, and other wooded areas, while cool whites, such as the brightest LEDs, are better suited for more modern landscape designs.
A professional landscape lighting designer can help you choose the right type of uplight for your property. Whether you want to uplight the branches of a large tree, accent a particular plant, or showcase an architectural element, your landscape designer will consider the placement and height of the light fixture. You’ll also want to decide on your uplights’ brightness level or lumens.
While uplighting provides a dramatic effect, it can be even more beautiful when combined with other landscape lighting techniques. A well-designed lighting scheme will utilize uplighting and other lighting techniques to illuminate the entire space, creating a cohesive, welcoming ambiance and making your home safer at night.
While most homeowners know that uplighting will emphasize a portion of their yard or home, they may need to realize that it also creates shadows. This can add a subtle, attractive drama to the landscape at night and is especially striking on the bark of trees and leaves of plants.
- Accent Lighting
Accent lighting draws attention to your favorite features of the landscape. It’s often achieved with spotlights, though many fixtures can highlight different features. For instance, a lighted trellis or other structure can draw focus to your garden, while an LED floodlight can illuminate steps or walkways. When positioned high in a tree, these lights can also create a moonlight effect to highlight the shadows of branches and leaves, much like natural moonlight.
Pathway lighting accentuates the texture and height differences of a yard’s paths, stairs, and garden beds, making them safe for walking at night. It can even draw focus to your landscape by highlighting retaining walls, boulders, and other stone features. It’s also a great way to show off water features and add a hint of intrigue.
This technique is especially beautiful for highlighting a shrub or other plant with a distinctive shape. It can also work to highlight the silhouette of a dark object against the background of an illuminated wall or fence. A lighted sculpture or other feature can help draw attention to your home and increase its curb appeal.
Lighted urns, lanterns, or hanging baskets can create a romantic atmosphere and help set the mood for your outdoor space. They can also serve as an eye-catching decoration for your patio or deck.
Color-changing lights can add a new dimension to your landscape and are easy to install, especially in existing fixtures. These lights are often LED-based, so they’re instant-on and don’t need to warm up or turn off. They can be operated off a remote or an app and come in various shapes, sizes, and colors.
Accent lighting is a great way to showcase your home, especially during holidays and special events. It’s also a useful tool to deter crime. Studies have shown that well-placed outdoor lights can cut crime by 39%. It’s important to choose a functional and aesthetically pleasing design, and JellyFish Lighting can help you find the right lights to fit your property.
- Flood Lighting
A landscape lighting system should include a mix of different fixture types to illuminate your home, highlight specific features, and create a well-lit outdoor living space. A combination of up-lights, spotlights, and floodlights will help create the right effect for your outdoor area and provide the safety you desire and need after dark.
Uplighting draws attention to dramatic architectural elements, such as tree trunks or sculptures in the garden. Using a light angled towards the object illuminates the form and creates beautiful shadow patterns. This is also a great way to highlight the underside of the canopy on a tall tree and make it stand out.
Spotlights, with their narrower beam width, are better suited to uplighting. However, they can also provide general illumination when a landscape lighting design uses light and shadow to create visual impact and contrast. Spotlights can be positioned along paths, driveways, and decks to provide illumination where needed.
Floodlighting, which typically has a wider beam angle, is ideal for illuminating large garden areas. This light can be placed between uplights to provide a background wash over your landscaping and help create a seamless finish to the whole design.
This lighting style is also good for larger hardscape elements such as fountains and gazebos to provide a more natural moon-lit effect. Large fixtures with full glare guards can be positioned high up in trees and angled down to wash the wall underneath with light. This technique is often used for ‘wall washing’ or grazing wall techniques and can create a striking look.
Path lights, which are the opposite of spotlights in that they aim downwards, can be used to light pathways and walkways. They are also commonly used to illuminate steps on a deck or patio for safety purposes. These can be placed either overhead or around the perimeter of a seating area to provide the required lighting.
Feature lighting brings a stunning piece of furniture, such as a bench or table, to life at night. It can be a fantastic finishing touch to a garden and can make an impact and create a real talking point. Often, this is achieved by embedding the lights within timber paneling or even the seats themselves to achieve a truly stylish finish.
- Ambient Lighting
Landscape lighting is a great way to show off your yard and home at night. It highlights architectural features, creates dramatic shadows, and draws the eye to the most appealing elements of a property. It also adds security, safety, and nighttime enchantment to your home. Studies have shown that it can even increase the value of your property.
Using multiple lighting techniques, your landscape designer can create a well-lit environment with the right feel. Ambient lighting, which illuminates the general area of space, can be done by flood lights, well lights, and low-voltage landscape lights.
Aiming multiple light sources at the same object creates an effect known as grazing, which illuminates the texture of a wall or other surface and gives it dimension. This technique can be used with hardscape walls, fences, decks, and other outdoor structures. Well, lights and spotlights are typically used to achieve this. A technique called “wall washing” uses wide-beam light to wash a building facade or long row of plants, eliminating the harsh shadows created by a single light source.
Accent lighting, which draws the eye to a particular feature, is another common landscape lighting method. You can use recessed spotlights, track lights, and low-voltage lighting to highlight your garden’s statues, artwork, water features, plants, or other objects. Another great option for accent lighting is to place a fixture high in a tree and illuminate the branches and leaves, mimicking moonlight.
Pathway lighting outlines walkways, making them safe and visually appealing. Illuminated pathways can also create a sense of intrigue and mystery, drawing the eye through the yard.
Deck lighting, which includes stair lights and railing lights, can be used to highlight the details of a deck or patio. A well-lit deck can make a wonderful dining, drinking, and entertaining social space.
Some landscape lighting fixtures are integrated, meaning the LED board is built into the fixture. This is more expensive than installing a separate bulb, but it’s convenient if the fixture is damaged. Most landscape lighting comes in both line voltage and low voltage options, and you can choose a fixture based on its lumen output (brightness), color temperature, beam spread, and other factors.