I am looking for advice on what lighting we should purchase for our house. I am thinking 5 max spread path lights to go up the left side of the pathway. I was also thinking 2 spotlights for the left of the front door and 3 spotlights for the right of the front door. The spotlights on the right would have to go on the grass in front of the bushes due to the overhang though. Not sure how that would look. Any advice would be appreciated. I am also wondering what wattage I would need for all the fixtures.
Hi there. I’ve diagrammed your photos to suggest how I might approach lighting your home. For myself, one of the bigger challenges of giving lighting advice based on photos is not having a clear idea of obstacles that might make it difficult for people to follow my recommendations. In your case that’s important because illuminating siding effectively can be difficult when trees or shrubs or some other obstacle make it hard to position lights at an ideal distance from the foundation. To put it more plainly, in order to minimize the striping or banding effect and show off more of the surface of the slats, ideally you’ll want your fixtures about a foot and a half or so away from the facade of the house. So please bear all that in mind when considering my feedback. Basically, I recommend uplighting the sections indicated by the yellow graphics. Because it looks like that hedge beneath the two first floor windows would prevent you from lighting the far right section of the house effectively, I recommend that you instead uplight the tree at that corner of the house so that some of the spillover and reflected light illuminates that section of your facade. Depending on how bright you go with those fixture (more on this below), you could either uplight the foundation shrubs (orange graphics) or allow them to be illuminated indirectly by the spotlights on your house facade and that large tree. You have a relatively short walkway, so I don’t think you’d need more than four (even three should work) path lights (blue ovals) to light your walkway effectively. The max spreads are great fixtures but because your yard is on an incline, I’d consider going with the smaller version of that fixture, to keep the light source hidden as you’re ascending the steps. You won’t get as big of a light pool as with the taller fixture, but again, your walkway is fairly short so that shouldn’t be an issue for you. I’d also recommend you alternate stagger the lights for visual interest and to avoid a runway effect. Finally, I’d uplight that great stone retaining wall with a couple of floodlight fixtures (blue graphics). Brightness level is very much a personal preference. I don’t have street lights or much ambient light to contend with that might wash out the impact of my lights so most of my lamps are 2W with the occasional 3W for taller trees and shrubs. Ideally, your landscape lighting effect should be impactful enough to be seen but subtle enough that it’s not distracting. The thing is, those guidelines mean different things to different people. Ultimately, you’ll have to decide how much light you want to introduce to your house and yard overall after dark and work from there. My last piece of advice is, unless you’re on a really strict budget, don’t be afraid to experiment and get things “wrong”. That’s how we learn and I’ve accidentally created some compelling lighting effects just by playing with different brightness levels, filters, lenses, and fixture types. Hope this helps to get you started.
