Hi all - New to the forum here, and at this point, I feel like I've watched every YouTube video available on landscape lighting. I've spoken with a few contractors to get their thoughts and have tried to incorporate what I like about each of their designs into the pictures below. Would appreciate everyone's thoughts on this design as well as thoughts on wattage and beam spread for each. My initial feeling is nothing more than 3W would be needed since the roof line isn't very high. Here are my initial thoughts: - For the left side of the house, 3w and fairly narrow (38 degree) spread for the left of the left window and right of the right window. I'm thinking 3W with a 110 degree spread in the middle. My concern here is that I will have large dark spots under the windows that won't look right with this approach. One contract suggest going with 3 lights across the front all with a 110 degree spread (2 of the lights would be mounted directly under each window). Everything I've read has said to not put a light directly under a window, but those 2 rooms get minimal usage in the evening. - For the walls in the entryway siding, I'm thinking 110 degree spread, 3w. The light above the front door provides enough lighting to illuminate the front door. - Lastly, I have a large Japanese maple (not pictured) that I’m considering up lighting with 3 60 degree spread, 3w up lights. Does that sound reasonable or is 2 lights enough? It's a fairly large canopy but not an overly tall tree (maybe 15 feet tall at most). Thanks and appreciate your help. Mack
Hi Mack Sounds like you've been doing your homework. In general, your approach to creating a lighting plan is perfectly sound. Although I don't have a lot more to add, I diagrammed some of your photos to illustrate some some tips and alternative approaches. You may have vetoed the idea already but I'm surprised you didn't mention soffit lighting. Yours is one of only a handful of houses that I think is ideally suited for soffit lighting. You've got nice deep soffits and the angle of your roof would make it insanely easy to hide the puck lights from view (especially if they're core drilled). The fact that you could probably install them while on a stepping stool makes that approach all the more appealing, imo. In any event, there's any number of ways you could light that left side of your house. I chose to divide it into four sections where you're essentially installing the lights either directly above each shutter (for puck lights) or directly below each shutter. I'd probably go with a beam spread of no more than 38° or so. If you go with uplights (an approach I like, because you're considering a different beam spread between those windows), I think highlighting your retaining wall (perhaps with a small flood light or well light (if you want to avoid having a fixture installed in your lawn) would work well there. When you talk about avoiding dark areas (more on brightness levels below), bear in mind that there are a variety of ways to add "fill" light either directly or indirectly. For example, if you installed path lights (yellow ovals) in the locations I indicated, you could very well find that the light output (even though it's shining downward) is sufficient to light the area. Regarding the entryway, if you have the room to install lights in those locations you indicated in a way that they aren't obscured by your shrubs, that should work fine. Here, again, is a situation where you could choose to install a couple of 38° or so fixtures on each side of the wall or a perhaps a single 110° fixture on each side or even a small flood light on each side. Yet another approach (one I often recommend) is to forego lighting the walls there directly and instead illuminate the shrubbery there and essentially that becomes your fill lighting and walkway lighting. The photo of the colonial with two brightly lit evergreen shrubs flanking the doorway is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. What I'm attempting to illustrate in the photo I diagrammed of your entry way is that there's multiple ways you can illuminate shrubs that will add variety, interest and complexity to your lighting plan. Similarly, when you talk about lighting your Japanese maple, there isn’t any one single ideal way to illuminate it. You could flank it with a couple of 60° fixtures or 110°. Depending on where it’s located on your property, you could illuminate it from the sides, if you wanted to illuminate the foliage in a different way. Finally, a word about brightness. I try to remind people that lumens (brightness) is a better way to describe LED lighting than using watts. You could, for instance, have a 2W bulb that emits significantly more lumens than a 3W or 4W bulb. Since lamps are not cheap, I often recommend that people try one or two lamps in a few fixtures and then live with them for a while. This will give you a sense of whether that’s the lighting level you want for the rest of your lighting fixtures. HTH
