I would love some help and ideas for lighting up the front of my home. I’ve attached a picture. Thank you all in advance!
Terrific home, Mlode. Please refer to my diagram of your photo here to see one possible approach. Based on what I can see in the photos, you might have to address some challenges to light the facade effectively but if you're creative and willing to make some changes, I think you could make it work.Basically, I'm zeroing in on the features of your house i find to be most remarkable--the siding, the gables and your garage doors. To light the siding without creating unwanted shadows, you'll need to get at least a foot away from the facade of the house. If you're able to do that without impacting your landscaping, I'd also recommend uplighting the columns on your porch as well. What might be your biggest logistical challenge is hiding cable for fixtures you'd need to light the gables. I don't know lots of people with truly attractive garage doors and yours are stunning.if you have the room beneath your garage door frame tops, some low profile puck lights or hardscape lights mounted there would light the doors in a way that you can't achieve with the sconces there. Just a handful of thoughts based on my first impressions of your house. Hope this helps get you started.
Mlode: I agree with Meso, those garage doors are gorgeous and cry out to be illuminated. From my experience, the 300 lumen ProBuddy Plus puck lights are the best option for lighting relatively dark colored doors. The smaller ProBuddy lights would probably not provide sufficient light as they are only 100 lumen LEDs. However, there is an issue of glare from the puck lights. It is quite noticeable with the 300 lumen lights, especially with the light mounted well above your eyes. If you aren’t shy about making holes in your 2x8 wood door framing, the best option would be to take a hole saw to the frame and recess the light into the woodwork. If you simply surface mount the puck light to the framing you will need some sort of glare guard around the light. How attractive that would be is for you to decide. For simple surface mounting, the hardscape lights are another option, but the integrated fixtures have relatively low luminosities, with the 18 inch light only putting out 80 lumens. The undercover lights would probably be a better option. With these you have G4 bulb wattage options for adjusting the light output. The 3 watt bulb has a 300 lumen output with the option of going higher or lower with the 4 or 2 watt bulbs. I would suggest using the rotatable light fixture to angle the light toward the door and away from your eyes, but still adding the glare shield to better hide the lamp assembly from the street view. Enjoy. And don’t be afraid to experiment; that’s part of the fun. Bob
