Hello everyone, I hope all is well and everyone is safe! We finally got around to starting some outside projects at our house and were looking for some guidance on how to light up the front the house as well as the side of the house which is visible from the street. We just got 2 trees installed on the side which are flanking 4 bushes in the middle, so highlighting those 2 would be great, as well as doing something to make the broad side of the house less boring. Regarding the front of the house, I would like to do uplights (would prefer to hold off on any puck/recessed lighting for now) and possibly some lights to highlight the gables (if that is not overkill). I would appreciate any and all suggestions for fixtures and placements. I am glad to have found this forum and learned about beam angles, surface mounts, and light temperatures. Thank you all in advance!
Welcome, Arpan. What I love about your house is that it’s a lot richer in character than it seems at first glance. I’ve diagrammed a couple of your photos to suggest one possible approach. On the main facade of the house, I recommend 38 degree spotlights for the sections indicated. That beam spread should highlight all your brickwork nicely with little (if any) light trespass. On your garage, I’d highlight those gabled areas with 38 degree mini spotlights. I‘Ve recently started encouraging people to consider changing some of their outdoor light fixtures to types that would work more harmoniously with their landscape lighting. I think this Is a good idea if you are not crazy about your existing fixtures and/or if you want to attractively light areas of your home that might be difficult to effectively light with your landscape lighting. In short, please take my suggestions with a grain of salt. Having said that, IMO you’ve got a terrific front door.I think a downlight would highlight it (and your front stoop) much more interestingly than the existing light. At the very least, I’d recommend softening the light and dialing back the brightness a bit. Same for the garage wall lights. If puck lights are off the table, perhaps switching to down light fixtures to highlight the brick work there would be an attractive alternative. On the right side of your house, you have endless options. I don’t know what region you live in but one approach is to choose something you love and go bold. Maybe it’s roses. Or could be burning bush. Or azaleas, rhododendrons, holly, nandina. Think about what would look interesting as seasons change and consider what shadows it would create on that wall. Again, whatever you love and lots of it. You could do some cool ornamental grasses that are both stunning and create movement on breezy days. Another approach is to simply play with glare guards, filters, and diffusers on your new fixtures to create different light effects while you wait for your garden to fill in. Hope this helps to point you in the right direction.
Thank you so very much for the compliments and guidance! For the spotlights on the front and gable areas, would you suggest the all star minis? especially the 2 lights diagrammed for the gables - does it make sense to mount them to the fascia? Regarding your suggestions on swapping out existing fixtures,you are spot on. We are in the process of swapping those out as well as getting shutters for the house, but we never considered downlight fixtures, it makes perfect sense to do that. For the right side of the house - apologies for the late evening pictures, but I am happy to say that our landscaper did some variation of your suggestions, so I feel much better about boosting the curb appeal now. I included some day time pictures of that side of the house to see if you had some lighting thoughts on that side if that is ok? We have two trees and 4 bushes in between (all of which will take quite some time to fill in), Since the trees are so small, would the spark spot lights be good options for the trees for now? For in between - is it better to space out some more spot lights on the bushes or maybe some path lights? Lastly, I forgot about the other side of the house with the walkway to the back yard. Do a few lower beam spread path lights make sense there along with a downlight fixture for the side entrance? Thank you for the time and help, and sorry for the barrage of questions. Just very excited to fix up the house and have a forum to bounce thoughts/ideas off you all with. Take care!
Glad to help, Arpan (sorry spellcheck mangled your name in my first reply).I can somewhat describe the differences between fixture models but I also encourage you to window shop on the site so you will get a better sense of the different fixture types, features, and available options for each. The All-Star mini is essential a slimmed down version of the All-Star. I usually recommend this model for upper level uplighting or anywhere else that fixtures are likely to be visible but there's not a tremendous difference between this light and the chunkier version. The lead wire for the mini is 4 ft long, whereas the bigger version has a 25 ft lead wire option. Bottom line, either of these would work just fine for all of your uplighting. There are gutter mounts and surface mounts available for these fixtures. Unless you're 100% confident that you can install these safely, I highly recommend you have someone like your roofer or electrician or landscape lighting pro install lights anywhere you might have concerns about potential damage to you home. These pros will not only know how to safely attach your lights to your house but they can determine creative ways to hide and route your wiring. I was able to do 90% of my lighting install myself but climbing ladders is not one of my favorite things to do so I was happy to have my roofer install my upper level lights. After some thought, I'd recommended an up/down sconce above your front door to light your doorway and to show off that cool scallop shaped panel above that second floor window. That is, as long as light entering that window at night is a concern. Other than replacing that side door sconce with a downlight and possibly lighting that upper floor window (a 38° beam spread would be more appropriate here), I don't have any more specific recommendations for lighting that side of the house. But for what it's worth, I started installing my lights back in February and continued to tweak and add lights up until this past month. Some people have a very specific overall lighting plan in mind from the very beginning but it's also ok to just do the front to start and then as you spend more time getting to know your new home, ideas about how to light creatively and for safety and utility will come to you. You'll think about where your children will play, where and how you'd like to entertain family and guests, lawn and landscape maintenance, etc. Having said all that...I know you mentioned wanting to put off something like puck lights but I hope you will give it some serious thought. Full disclosure, I don't work for VOLT, so I don't get any sales commission or anything. LOL. The reason I bring this up is that my initial reaction to seeing your house is that those nice deep soffits and other architectural features make it absolutely ideal for down lighting. It's a beautiful effect that I don't think people use often enough and it keeps most of your lighting fixtures up and off the ground (out of the way of foot traffic, pets, lawn equipment, etc. Again, just my two cents. Hope this helps.
