First off thank you all for the great information on this forum! We just redid our siding so looking to now add some landscape lighting to lighten things up. Currently I have 4 sconces (up down lights) on each side of garage and door which are 3,000K, so i was thinking of doing 3,000K for the rest of the landscape lights. I also have 3 lights in the soffit area above garage doors and front door but I dont turn them on because it seems to be too bright at about 700 lumen and the sconces seem sufficient. Ideally I was hoping to have the lights be as hidden as possible so was wondering if it's okay to use in ground lights everywhere (the Salty Dog)? For the Chimney do I need one light at the center or is it better to do 2 lights, one per corner? I wanted to light up 5 of the bushes/trees, starting from the left, the japanese maple, then the tall weeping spruce, then the very wide norway weeping spruce, followed by the tall weeping blue cedar, and lastly the dogwood tree on the right. If I light up the trees is the in ground light okay and is lighting up the trees and the chimney sufficient or should i be shining light on the grey part of the house as well? Any advice or suggestion would be beyond appreciated. THANKS!!
Incredible house you've got there, Roman! What's funny is that even though I didn't read your design ideas until after I'd rolled some possibilities around in my head, it seems we have something of a similar design sense. Fortunately, there's no one single best way to design a landscape plan. The "best" plan is the one that you decide flatters your home the most. I diagrammed one of your photos to give you a sense of the variety of possible approaches. You should feel free to embrace or reject any of my ideas and suggestions.Let's look at some possible plans. First, you could highlight all of the grey sections of the house. Gutter mount a fixture and angle it so that it highlights two sides of the chimney above the white section of your house. Using a ground staked spotlight, do the same with the chimney behind the dogwood. Then uplight the two grey sections flanking that large window on the first level. That's a perfectly decent and cohesive plan for lighting the house. You could just stop there. Or you could instead downlight those two areas with soffit mounted puck lights. Choose lights bright enough to both highlight those walls and gently bathe your garden beds with light and then call it a night. Or maybe you're thinking, gee the white section of your house looks really lonely and needs some attention. So maybe you want to drop a couple of stake mounted lights in the ground to flank those three windows and highlight and define that white area above the garage. Pheww. Done. Or not. Maybe you decide that you really want to emphasize your landscape more than the house. But now you're worried that lighting all those sections of the house and the plants might be overkill. Great, now what? Well, what if instead of lighting the white walls directly, you uplit that japanese maple from below so that its shadow was projected onto that white background and you could see the leaves dancing when it was breezy outside? Same with the other trees and shrubs you wanted to highlight. Keep things interesting by uplighting some, side lighting some, front lighting some so that their shadows are projected against the wall. Maybe you don't want to light them all. Maybe you want to see the silhouette of that dogwood against the backdrop of your illuminated chimney. Starting to get the picture? Anyway, to answer one of your questions more directly, there's pros and cons to both stake mounted and well lights. For instance, I love that landscapers and the mail folks who have to take a shortcut through my yard aren't going to trip over the well lights I have highlighting the oak tree in the center of my front yard. I don't love clearing the leaves, mud and debris from the lens of those well lights (which I don't have to do with my staked spotlights mounted elsewhere in the yard. I also find staked spotlights are a lot easier to aim and tweak than well lights are.HTH
Thank you so much for such a detailed response! Wow where do I start. Here are some comments/questions: 1. So the chimney up top for sure would be cool to light, just can't imagine running the wiring all the way there. 2. Did I understand correctly that for both chimney's I need 2 lights, one per corner? 3. What would be your thoughts on doing the chimney, the two sides of the big window and under the big window then doing all 5 bushes/trees I mentioned? I just thought those are nice trees so would be nice to highlight them instead of doing the whole mulch bed. By washing the whole mulch bed I worry of making the whole area too bright. Thanks again
Glad to be of help. So what I’m telling you are some different approaches to creating your own unique lighting plan. You don’t have to light both chimneys (or either chimney) to create a compelling light plan from all of the suggestions I offered. There are some tasks (climbing on roofs, for example to install fixtures) that some people may want to leave to professionals. When offering landscape lighting advice, I try to avoid words like “need” and “should”. There’s more than one way to light your chimney. I’m guessing from perspective those photos were taken that you have some idea of what you want to see (and what you want others to see) when they look at your house. That’s a good starting point for deciding what you want to light and how you want to light it. You can effectively light two sides of the chimney by aiming the fixture at the corner. Two lights would probably do a more thorough job but some people think merely highlighting architecture or plants makes for more complex and interesting lighting design. I think your plan sounds great. Just keep in mind that you can choose lower lumens bulbs (including for those soffit lights you mentioned, I suspect) if you’re concerned about introducing too much light on or around the house.
Thanks! For the soffit lights I unfortunately have existing 6" cans so I can't seem to find something that's not as bright in a 6". What I have is about 700 lumens. I've never done landscape lighting before so I kinda of wanted reassurance that what I'm thinking will look "good"
Again, glad to help, Roman. I think you might have a better design sense than you realize. Don't be afraid to experiment and make mistakes. You were thinking of lighting a handful of favorite trees and shrubs in your yard. Oftentimes you can "show off" plants and trees without directly illuminating them. At the very least, I hope you'll experiment with different lighting techniques for those shrubs and trees. Please keep us posted on your progress.
What type of lights should be going on the grey part of the house (a wash type of light, a spot light or in ground/well light) and what angle for the bulb?
I think of floodlights as comparable to the “fill” tool in a drawing software program. If you want to fill a large surface with light and you don’t need a whole lot of control over the way it spreads, then you should use a floodlight. Spotlights are the most versatile. They allow you to control the shape, direction, and other output characteristics more easily than you can with either a flood light or a well light. You can basically use a spotlight as a floodlight by lowering the glare guard to expose more light Spotlights will accept filters and lenses you might not be able to use with floods or well lights. Well lights are great but fine tuning them is less straightforward than it is with spotlights. They are great if you want your fixture presence as low profile as possible. But if you get lots of falling leaves, needles, etc, keeping them free of debris can sometimes be a chore. With spotlights or well lights, you can use the new MR16 lamps that offer 3 different beam spreads in one.
Another question I had is more specific to Volt lighting. I notice most lights are brass which look brown. If getting lights that stick out like spot lights my house design would look best with black color light and not brown. I have heard that brass darkens over time. Any pictures or comments on what brass looks like as it ages. Or am I overthinking it and the brass colored lights would look fine? I know volt does have black lights but they are all much much more expensive. Thanks again
I’m not sure which black spotlight fixtures you mean. The one black spotlight currently offered is a new model that’s huge, super bright, and meant for commercial applications. You don’t need to worry about the fixtures clashing with the surroundings.The brass gets a little duller over time from being exposed to the elements. It’s really essentially a neutral color at that point. And after a few weeks, you will forget the lights are even there (except at night, of course). Lights on your house will be obscured by shrubbery. Fixtures aimed at your shrubs and trees will be more visible but if you’re creative, you can hide them behind boulders and plants.
Hello again. So I'm leaning toward doing all spot lights on the 5 bushes/trees and using 2 spots on the chimney. With that said can you please help me with what beam spread and lumens I should use on them all. So starting from the left: 1) Maple 2) Blue Spruce 3) Green Spruce 4) Weeping blue atlas cedar 5) Dogwood 6) Chimney Also when wiring it would a daisy chain from the back right of the house be okay with the chimney being the first light and the maple tree being the last light? Thanks!
Since you were concerned about introducing too much light, I’d go with 3W lamps. Thirty eight degree beam spreads for the maple and the green spruce and a 15 degree spread for the others and for the chimney. If your entryway lights are on at night, I’d go with a comparable light color temperature (at least on the chimney). My guess is that your porch lights are either 3000K or 2700K warm white. Because they make troubleshooting and moving lighting around so much easier, I’m biased toward using hubs vs daisy chaining, especially for those new to lighting. You spend a bit more on wiring initially but if it’s in your budget, it’s worth it IMO. Others here are more experienced with the daisy chain technique and hopefully will chime in. Hth.
And do you think it's enough lumens for the chimney given the height? And beam spread for chimney is having it so narrow be okay? How close to the chimney am I placing it?
My neighbor has his columns fully illuminated. I prefer mine with the light fading out beginning slightly more than 2/3 of the way up each column. I think less is more. If you want the chimney fully illuminated, you may want to go with 5W. I can't imagine you'd need brighter than that. I couldn't remember if you're planning to light one or two sides of the chimney. If two sides, you'd aim the light at the corner of the chimney and if you want more coverage, a 38 degree beam spread might be a better choice there. Actually, for your own peace of mind, I think you may want to opt for the 20/40/60 lamp for your spotlights. This way, you can experiment a little while knowing you're covering all your bases. At about a foot away from the base of your chimney, your lights will graze the chimney and show off the stone detail in much the same way that your porch lights do. The further away you move the fixture, the less detail your lights will show. You'll still be able to fully illuminate the chimney but you'll be "washing" the surface rather than grazing it.
Thanks! I was planning on having 2 lights one on each corner. I'll check out the adjustable beam angle. And as for wattage what your saying of slightly fading out toward the top I like, I just wasn't sure how many feet high a 3W bulb would reach. The only other beam spread I had a question on was the green spruce and if it needs even more of a spread given it's low and 10 feet wide (7ft if you don't include the thinner ends). And I will be doing 3000K to match my garage and front door up/down lights.
@Mesodude2 So I'm making progress slowly but surely! I decided to eluminate the trees I mentioned plus the chimney. Now I'm debating if I should also light the side of the house left and right of the big window. Do you think that would look good and if yes what beam angle light do I need? And unfortunately the adjustable beam angle doesn't come in 3000k. Thanks!
I think if you're already uplighting those three taller shrubs you mentioned earlier as well as the groups of shorter shrubs, a significant amount of light from those fixtures will also hit the two areas bordering the window. If you then also add fixtures to illuminate those two areas bordering the windows, you're basically flooding that whole area (shrubs and house) with light. If I were your landscape designer, I would either uplight each of the taller shrubs in front of those two grey sections so that their shadows were cast against the house or I would simply illuminate the two sections (38° should work) and leave those two shrubs silhouetted against the house (as shown in the photo I posted earlier. You have a beautiful yard and home and it can be tempting to light everything. But IMO, you create a more complex and compelling lighting plan by highlighting your most interesting, unique, or favorite trees and plants (your "stars" if you will) and allowing spillover light to hint at the rest of your garden. For instance, if you followed my suggesting and didn't light those shrubs in front of the grey sections of your house, maybe you would light the center shrub and then bring some pops of color to your plan by focusing spotlighting the red shrubs only or the brighter green globe shaped shrubs only. Those are my suggestions. HTH
