Hi- I'm a complete newbie when it comes to outdoor lighting and what works/looks best. This will be a DIY project that I am really excited to take on this spring. There are no streetlights in our neighborhood and with the darker exterior paint color, our house can barely be seen at night. We would love to add some decorative lighting to highlight the front and side of the house. We are planning on adding some additional landscaping this summer in the mulch beds right off the house and potentially planting a tree by the driveway. The existing outdoor lights on the garage and above the front door will be replaced at some point in the near future. Any suggestions on fixture/transformer types, light beam angles/spreads, wattage and other useful materials needed would be greatly appreciated. Seeing some of the previous posts with completed projects really inspires us to illuminate our home using a thoughtful and compelling light plan that showcases the home in the best light . Thank you in advance for any thoughts and/or recommendations! -Matt
Hi, Matt. Fellow landscape lighting enthusiast here. I diagrammed a few of your photos to suggest some possible approaches to lighting your house and landscaping. I've found that with offset gables and architectural features like jetties (which can make it tricky to uplight the facade in a straightforward way), creating a coherent lighting plan can prove challenging. Because of your nice deep soffits and dark color scheme, I'd highly recommend soffit/puck lights. In the photo of the full facade of your house, I've placed yellow graphics to indicate one coherent (imo) lighting layout. Depending on how much light you wanted overall, you could also add lights in one or all of the areas where the orange and green graphics are. Although your color scheme is dark and the ambient light is low where you are, you can still get away with using fairly low lumens (in the 1.5 to 3W range) to effectively illuminate the house and landscape. But because your house isn't super tall, I wouldn't go any higher than 5W for those areas. I'd save lights that bright for elements like the tall trees in your front yard. On the side of your house, I've also indicated where at minimum I'd place lights and also an optional location (orange graphic). On your path, you have more options for creativity. I'm a big fan of ornamental grasses and I think you could uplight those so that the light bouncing off of the grass illuminates the path subtly (yellow graphics) or you could use path lights (blue graphics) or even some combination of the two. As for replacing the line voltage fixtures on your house, for the garage, my recommendation would be either cylindrical up/down lights (or down lights) which would produce narrowly focused beams of light closer to the walls or barn type downlights (which would illuminate the house and a wider area of the ground below. If you have backup security lighting on the house, I think you'll be comfortable choosing low lumens light bulbs comparable to the light output of your landscape lighting. Same goes for the light over your front door. You could go with a narrow cylinder or a barn light. Hope this helps.
Hi Mesodude2, Thank you very much for your suggestions!! I never would have thought about using soffit/puck lights to help highlight the home, but it makes perfect sense. I love the idea of placing the path lights to uplight the ornamental grasses and subtly illuminate the pathway. I'm going to start with your suggested coherent light layout (yellow graphics) and add the others as needed. My wife really likes the idea of switching out the existing fixtures with barn lights. Do you think I can get away with using one transformer for the project or should I break it out into two? My initial thought was to install a larger transformer in the garage and run all lines from there. Thank you again; all of this was really helpful!!
Glad to help, Matt. You might be able to get away with one transformer. Ultimately will depend on factors such as the size (capacity) of your transformer, the number of fixtures, and the lengths of your cable runs. Whichever type of wall fixture you switch to, I strongly advise you to look online or walk around your neighborhood to get an idea of which models/designs will produce the effect you have in mind for your garage. And speaking of your garage, as an alternative to or in addition to changing those wall sconces, you might consider puck lights to illuminate your door. Finally, have fun with the process and don't be afraid to contact customer service if you want advice before making your purchase. I've always found the CS reps to be very helpful.
