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Light Accents
1 Mar, 2008 By: Ken Krizner LivescapesLandscapers can illuminate their work to add value.
Landscape lighting is analogous to a painting. While an artist can visualize myriad possibilities while looking at a blank canvass, landscapers can visualize the many ways they can enhance the beauty of their landscapes by bathing them in light.
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For an artist, the medium is colors. For landscape lighting installers, the medium is light.
"It is artistic," says Jeffrey Dross, senior product manager for Kichler Lighting, a Cleveland-based manufacturer of decorative residential lighting fixtures. "You have a pallet of light to work with. You paint with different colors and shades, you should do the same with light."
Landscapers want to be artistic with their lighting because they take pride in their work. They also want their clients to enjoy that landscaping—at any time.
"People that care about their landscaping want to appreciate it from a nighttime view as much as from a daytime view," says Richard Lentz, owner of Lentz Landscape Lighting in Dallas.
Lighting adds value to the landscape because it gives homeowners an extension of the home.
"When it is dark, you can't see beyond the window," Lentz notes. "From an aesthetics point of view, landscape lighting makes the rooms look larger because it brings the outdoors in."
 Use a narrow beam of light to accent a tall tree. The light beam will be narrow coming out of the fixture and widen as it hits the canopy. |
What Clients Want
There are three main goals homeowners want to achieve with landscape lighting: add beauty and ambiance to their homes, improve security, and add value to their property.
Landscapers must take into consideration the shapes and sizes of the client's trees and shrubs, the fact that many of these trees and shrubs will grow, potential changes in landscape design down the road, and any architectural fixtures in the yard or on the home.
It's a matter of education.
"It is not that people don't want good lighting, they haven't been educated on good lighting," says Nancy Goldstein, principal designer of Nancy Goldstein Design LLC of Marblehead, MA. "People don't realize what they can have [in lighting designs]. I find that my clients are continually surprised and delighted by what they see."
 In beds with small flowers, spread light across the top of them. Statues and other landscape ornaments can be lit from below. |
The types of light fixtures to use depend entirely on the types and size of trees, shrubs and flowerbeds that will be illuminated, Lentz says.
There are three types of fixtures that can be used for residential landscape lighting.
- Uplight fixtures can be used to enhance a trunk or canopy of a medium to small tree or ornamental tree.
"Typically, when you uplight a tree, you want to accentuate the character of the trunk," Lentz says.
Uplight fixtures can be installed in-ground with the tops flushed with the ground level, or they can be installed above ground on a stake, which makes them focusable and movable.
Usually, the larger and the wider the tree, such as a crabapple or weeping tree, the more uplight fixtures are needed.
"If you have a tree that has a wide canopy and you want to uplight the entire canopy you will have to use at least three fixtures at 120 degrees from the tree," Goldstein says.
Conversely, a tree that is more vertical, such as an Arborvitae, would take just one uplight fixture to graze its front, she points out.
- A spotlight is a narrow-beam fixture and is used to accent a particular element, such as a water feature.
"You're keeping the light tight and on one source," Lentz says.
- Floodlights have wider beam spreads and can be used to give ambient light across a wide bank of shrubs. Floodlights can also be used to downlight an area.
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