As most other questions. Looking at advice for lighting this house up. I’m figuring 6 spot lights. Two in the right side. Two on the porch beams. Then two up the left side corners. My unknown is the left wall is tall and plain. Would a wall wash or something be good or just leave it?!! The landscaping has grown up quite a bit if that’s a difference. Wx. On left side those bushes are up to bottom of window
Hi, Pilot14. Stunning house there! I've diagrammed one of your photos to suggest an approach I might take. Whenever possible it's best to avoid placing lights in front of windows. On the occasions when I break that rule of thumb, I usually recommend that the homeowner choose lights with low wattage/lumens (to avoid unpleasant light trespass into the home). In your case, the brick is light enough that I wouldn't go higher than 2W lamps for your fixtures. If you light the area indicated by the yellow markers, I think you'll have excellent coverage of your house. Lighting the areas with orange graphics would take your plan from great to spectacular, IMHO. I've also indicated some places where you might place path lights (yellow ovals). I think lighting the porch posts is a great idea but it could be tricky positioning the lights there. You'd either have to secure them to the base of the columns (near ground level) or just off to the side in mulched areas. Hope this helps point you in the right direction.
That definitely looks interesting. I took an updated pic for the landscape that has grown up. How far off the wall do the spots need to be. I’m thinking the bushes may interfere with the lighting etc if I put it behind them. Maybe need to put in front. With the grown landscaping does that change anything?
Because of the way lights must be angled (to graze or wash the walls evenly), shrubbery that hugs the foundation could create challenges. Even lights on risers need to be installed close enough to the foundation in order to effectively light the facade of a house. If moving the shrubs isn’t an option, a plan that emphasizes downlighting might be an appealing alternative.
Well I finally got some time to get the lights ordered, and installed. Delivery was quick and I got the lights installed in about 2 days, dodging rain showers and the like. I spent maybe 10-20 mins aiming and moving the lights on first night I got them in. Need to go back and get more precision or better aiming on a few. 1. Left side of house. I need to see what can be done to get rid of the shadow on 2nd story. I have 4 spots there. 1ea. 15deg spot on the corners to show off the brick coins. I then have a 38deg on either side of the middle window, aimed more or less to the inner corner. Maybe moving those lights back and aimed differently will get some light spill up top? 2. I have 2 15 deg spots pointed at each column on the porch. Don't really see these as adding much, Thinking moving the left one to the window left of porch and uplighting that corner area. Move the other one to the far right side of the house and uplight the side of house that is seen from the street. 3. The shadow or dark area around the window on the right. Have 2 38deg spots on the angled walls. Maybe just reaiming them can get enough light splash to lighten up the middle some. Any ideas, thoughts, critiques, suggestions?
Congratulations on your install, Pilot14. Looks like you’re off to a decent start so do not despair. I think some of the aiming and positioning challenges you’ve encountered are likely fairly easy to address. Others may require a bit of creativity and still others may require you to make some unpleasant choices. Main issue I see is that your plants and the varying depths of your planting beds are making it difficult for you to illuminate the entire facade uniformly. You’re grazing that wall on left side (where we can clearly see the contours of your bricks and decorative brickwork) whereas on the right side (including your entryway), you’re able to position the lights far enough away from the foundation to smoothly wash the walls. One option is to remove or reposition the plants on the left so you can create a uniform effect across the facade. Another option is to reposition the fixtures on the right side so you’re then grazing all of the walls. Another approach that could work is to soften the lights on the left with frosted lenses. That way the difference between those two sections of the house would be less noticeable. Some of your beam spreads are overlapping. It’s particularly noticeable on the left side of the house and on the entryway where your columns (more on those momentarily). That isn’t bad in and of itself but it runs counter to the goal of highlighting sections of your house vs flooding the walls with light (which is essentially the effect that’s been created here). You don’t say which spotlight fixture you’re using but raising the shroud somewhat on your fixtures may help narrow the focus of the beams. With the beams more narrowly focused, transitions between the light fixtures will be more apparent. To give your plan a bit more complexity, consider moving that inner pair of spotlights and using them to uplight the bricks framing that first floor window there instead. Others may offer different suggestions but I think the most (and possibly only) effective way to illuminate that dark area above that center window on the left would be the way I suggested earlier—using a couple of spotlights mounted just above that window (something like in the photo below). It looks like you’ve got the infrastructure to hide the wires fairly easily (either inside the downspouts or perhaps discreetly attached to the exterior of the downspouts or the wall). 4. order to light uplight those columns effectively you’ll need to position a fixture directly below. There’s no other way that I know. It looks like you’re attempting to illuminate them from the planting beds. My suggestion? If you don’t want hire a masonry pro to install the lights in your walkway, you could place a pair of fixtures inside of a pair of planters or pots at the base of your steps. You’ll want some pots/planters that are at least as deep as the fixture stakes (the smallest I think are 10”). Alternatively, you can figure out some other creative way to securely anchor the fixtures in your planters. And as mentioned above, raising the shroud on your spotlights will narrow the beam spread so that most of the light is focused on the columns. 5. You didn’t ask about this but we can’t see your bed plantings. As it is, they’re all mostly backlit. Maybe leave some of them backlit (those on that left side would be my choice) but show off your landscaping with some small floods or perhaps an area light or two. Hope this helps and keep us all posted!
Thanks again for the responses. Understand all your suggestions, and will attempt to change some of them over the next few days. The spot I'm using is the allstar. The beam spreads, I think most of the shrouds are barely pulled forward, most just all the way back. Figure it will take a few days of tweaking and playing with it to figure out what works.
Glad to help. Basically the beam spread will be at its narrowest with the shroud fully extended and at its widest when fully retracted. Obviously with the shroud off entirely, you’re more or less using the fixture as a floodlight. Also wanted to suggest you consider making your hanging porch light part of your plan. With a very low wattage incandescent (15w or 25w) or LED bulb of comparable lumens, you can fill in that doorway area without washing out your other lights.
Ha, already ahead of you. Just put the hanging light on a honeywell timer to go along with the barn lights over the garage (around the left side you can't see........ You know of any pictures of the flood lights available? the backside of the property is full of woods and am thinking of putting some floods back there to light up the canopy. Though at same time, not sure as we have a lot of deer and turkey that transverse, and would not want to detour them.
Link for floods follows. Btw you could in theory use most spots as floods. https://www.voltlighting.com/shop/landscape-lighting/flood-lights
