Hello! I need your insight on light placement, which lights, and beam angle/width! I'm looking to light up the front of our home (front now and later on will do back) and also the three trees in lawn/landscape as well. I'm especially wondering about the placement of the uplights in front of the porch. Normally I would want to light up the porch columns with a narrow beam, but since the two columns have the step railing tied to it I'm not sure how to light up that area! I provided two different pictures, each from a slightly different angle as it's a little tricky to see it all.
Hey there, I'd be happy to provide some insight! I attached an image to illustrate some suggestions. To uplight the majority of the front, I would recommend using spotlights. For the light, I would recommend an All-Star™ or a budget-friendly option would be the Fat Boy. We also currently have a Father's Day Sale active for the Lusitano. These lights are all solid brass with lifetime warranties and are lamp-ready (use retrofitted light bulbs). For the beam spreads, I would recommend 15-degrees (the narrowest) on the columns, 38-degrees on the stone wall and 2nd story lights, and either 38-degrees or 60-degree for the fixtures near the window. Possibly even a 60-degree for the middle one, and 38-degrees in the (2) on the slimmer corners of the wall. To mount that light on the second story, you could use a gutter mount. It is a tad difficult to verify from your picture but, to illuminate that large peak, you could either surface mount or gutter mount (2) spotlights and then angle them so that light is directed towards the peak (I attached a picture to illustrate what this looks like). Although, I don't have a complete image of your property, I think you may also benefit from some path & area lights along that walkway up to the front or, possibly out by your mailbox. The Max Spread is our most popular style and we also have many decorative styles if desired.
Evan, sorry for my long delay in response! Thank you so much for your ideas and input! The beam spreads you recommend make sense and help me out a lot! One follow up question regarding the columns. Do you think it would a little not having the other two columns lit up, but even if I did try to light them up - I'm not sure there is a good way to do it as the railings of the steps cover most of the column? So I'm guessing your recommendation of leaving them along is the best. What light would you recommend for lighting up the tree (red - bloodgood japanese maple) in the front lawn?
Not a problem, glad to be of help! Originally when looking at the photo you posted, all of the columns were an obvious choice for illumination but I did notice the extra work those (2) columns would take and essentially just sought to balance the design altogether. You could very well light these (2) columns but given the rails, the effects would more than likely look noticeably different than the lighting effects on the other columns. Unless, you were to employ the same lighting method for all of the columns, adapted from the 2 with rails (an example as in if you decided to use puck lights to illuminate those 2 and applied it to the other 3) For those 2 columns, some options to consider would be: 1. Downlighting (either puck lights or downlights from the gutter system above). 2. Uplighting with some low-profile MR11 fixtures mounted on the stone ledge directly below the columns. 3. Placing a spotlight on either side of the staircase, back towards the columns to illuminate. For that small tree, I would recommend a lamp-ready spotlight such as the All-Star™ (a budget-friendly alternative would be a Fat Boy). Given the small size, I would consider starting with 2W LED MR16 and increase the wattage overtime as the tree grows (possibly expanding the beam spread as well for the growing canopy).
Evan it might be a little difficult to see in the photos - but in front of the stone wall is a Japanese maple. O would like to have this tree illuminated and the wall. Would I just put one light to uplight the tree and wall? Doing that would put a pretty big shadow of the tree on the wall, especially in summer when leaves are on tree. Or, to get full effect would one light need to uplight the rock wall and another uplight the tree? The trunk of the tree is about 9 feet away from the rock wall.
From 9ft away and with the stone wall lit, it should be easy to minimize or possibly even avoid a huge shadow from the maple entirely. If you install a spot with a long shroud (or well light like a Salty Dog) pretty close to the tree trunk and aim it fairly vertically, I think you should be fine. Also, if you're using lamp ready fixtures, you can further control light output by going with narrower beam spreads. Hope this helps.
Hello, I'm looking for help determining which spot lights and beam angles to use as well as which wattage/lumens. It's about 23-24 ft from ground to gutters on main portion of house. From reading other threads I'm thinking of doing 15 degree Fat Boy spots (3 on each side of the front door) + a 38 degree on the far left corner of garage. 38 degree Fat Boy on the plum colored tree in the yard as well as on each of the large oak trees in front yard, perhaps 2 per oak tree? How could/should I highlight the holly trees on the right side of the house and the chimney of the house? Should I light the two dormers over the garage with gutter mounted lights? If so, 38 degree fat boy with lower wattage bulb or something else? Please let me know if the number of lights, beam angles and brightness recommendations you'd make.
Spectacular house and wonderfully landscaped, Garrett. I've diagrammed a couple of your photos to indicate one possible approach. On your facade, I'd probably use a 15° spotlight on all the areas indicated. I think that beam spread will both show off that beautiful stonework and graze your shutters. Wider than 15° might bring a fair amount of undesired light inside your home, IMO. For your dormers over the garage, I'd choose gutter mounted mini spotlights. In terms of brightness, my philosophy is that less is more. I like the idea of just brushing those surfaces with light. I'd probably go with 3W for all those areas except for the dormers. Because they're white and because the light has a shorter distance to travel, they will appear significantly brighter than the other illuminated sections. So I'd probably go with 2W spots there. On the single large oak tree in my front yard, I've flanked the trunk with two spotlights near the base of the trunk and four well lights equally spaced on the perimeter as close to the drip line as possible. I'd use a similar approach here with your two large front yard trees. In my diagram I show just a couple of well lights (indicated by the circles). Whether you use 2, 3, or 4 well lights (I'd use two, at least), the idea is to bring them as close to install them as close to the drip line as possible while maintaining the same distance between them along the perimeter (if that makes sense). I'd go with nothing brighter than 3W here as well and you can go fairly wide in terms of beam spread, depending on how much of the canopy you want to highlight. I've used ovals in each diagram to indicate possible locations for path/area lights. VOLT has a wide variety of path lights. Some cast broader beam spreads than others. If you wanted to highlight just the garden area immediately at the base of that large tree, you could choose a smaller profile path light, for instance. If you wanted to project a pool of light that reached the sidewalk, you'd go with a fixture with a wider beam spread. Some ideas are no-brainers. In those chairs, you've already got a nice shock of red against a mostly neutral background to enjoy during the daytime. At night, you could uplight that beautiful maple (?) tree. Perhaps flank it with a couple of 60° spots, so that it can be easily enjoyed from both inside and outside of your home. At first, I imagined flooding those white shingles on the right but then I thought, booo-ring. Too obvious. Instead, let's highlight that awesome chimney a pair of 15° spots I think should do the job. On your nice white blank screen of shingles, I think we should project a great big shadow from one of those two trees on the right side of the house. I think either (or both) would look very cool but I tend to favor the one on the left. The branch structure is lighter and more open and would create more interesting shadows (especially when pushed by a breeze). If you choose the one on the right, it might be a good idea to use a well light instead of a spot (so you don't have to worry about damage fromlawn equipment or foot traffic. Well, hope this gets your creative juices going.
Thanks so much for this input and guidance. Very helpful! And great idea to try and do some shadows on the side of the house, that is something I'll toy with. I'm surprised to think that 3w and 2w is sufficient. Other than 2w for the 2 gutter mounted dormers over the garage do you recommend that all remaining lights be 3w? I'm thinking the chimney in particular is another 10 feet higher than the front gutter line and wonder if 3w is sufficient. I just don't have a perspective and wish that many of the posted photos would describe the light beam angles and wattages used so we could see what each type looks like. For the red maple out front would you light this with 38 or 60 degree beam angle lights? And with respect to the uplighting of the 2 large oaks are these the 110 degree well lights or would it work to cross two 38 or 60 degree beam fat boy's in front of the tree on the trunk and up into the canopy? I'm not sure I want to have well lights in the lawn. It sounds like a 150w transformer should more than suffice with room to grow. I'm thinking I'll have just 2 lines running from the transformer, each with 10-12 lights. Do you see anything wrong with this? Again, thanks so much for the input!
You're very welcome, Garrett. I hope you'll think of my lighting plan suggestions as more of a recipe you can tweak to your liking as opposed to a formula. if you want to be sure you get the coverage you need, you should absolutely go with lamps with higher lumens. Same goes for beam spread. Similarly, if you want to be sure your trees are fully illuminated, it probably makes sense to err on the side of wider beam spreads. I tend to illuminate landscape feature (especially trees) and architecture so that their general structure is highlighted but I recognize that not everyone embraces a minimalist approach. As long as you limit your total wattage load to no greater than 120W (or 80% of your max), those wire runs should be fine.
If you wanted a natural shadowing effect from the tree on the stone, you could place a smaller floodlight in front of the tree and adjust the angle accordingly from there. The floodlight would cast a shadow from the tree and also help to highlight the texture of the stone. If you were not keen on the shadowing effect, a spotlight under the stone wall would do well to specifically highlight the wall and its texture with another spotlight directly under the tree. Either or would look great in their own right - it is really a matter of preference.
