Hello! I stumbled across this forum a few days ago, and going through the questions and answers has been so helpful to me! I want to add some landscape lighting to the front of my home, but I want it to be very subtle. No homes around mine have any landscape lighting, so I don't want my home to attract too much attention. Just enough light to enhance it's natural beauty. I'm thinking of highlighting the Japanese Maple on the right side, weeping Redbud on the left, and the home itself. Question about the maple tree-would I need one or two uplights? I'm guessing 2700K and 3W in a Fat Boy or Top Dog, but I'm not sure what beam width? 60? The redbud on the left side of the house is small and is slow growing, so I'm guessing just one uplight. And for the house facade, maybe 4 uplights on either side of the bay window, and either side of the garage window. How do I place the up light on the far right, though? The left side is much narrower, and the right side includes both stone and siding. A few path lights will be added, too. I'm looking for a soft, diffuse look with no bright spots. I'm attaching photos that include those with the shrubs in bloom so you can see that the beds are pretty full. Any uplights against the house will have to be placed about 6" from the foundation. Thanks so much in advance for any advice!
Beautiful home! For the Maple tree, (2) uplights would likely be ideal. Ideally, it might be best to angle each fixture to illuminate the portion of the tree opposite from where its placed (marked in yellow on image below). 2700K is the most common color temp (warm white), and 3-5W MR16 bulbs would likely be ideal as well given you want subtle illumination (certainly no brighter than 5W). 60 degree beam spread at minimum - 110 might also look beautiful; this wider beam spread could be more ideal in the future as well if you expect the canopy of the tree to exponentially grow. Fixture wise, either the Top Dog or Fat Boy would work as you mentioned - it mainly comes down to style preference and budget. Overall, you have a great plan for the uplighting on the house. Placing the uplights at 6" will help apply a "grazing" effect to nicely highlight the texture of the stone. You could consider placing an LED flood light in front of the plants near the garage to cast a naturally beautiful "shadowing" on the side behind the plants. The Gentle Splash Flood Light could look beautiful and offers interchangeable lenses if you wanted to diffuse the illumination further. Another MR16 uplight on the weeping redbud could look beautiful as well, 38-60 degree and 2-3W could look beautiful (2W maybe more ideal if you desire subtle) - with the interchangeable MR16s, you can adjust overtime as the tree grows as well. Any of our classic path lights would look beautiful in the garden bed - styling comes down to preference/budget and the spacing would be dependent on the hat/shade size (spacing recommendations are listed on the product pages). You could also consider adding another flood light to the large shrub(s) in front of the patio. And, you could consider adding some illumination to the 2nd story. A compact, subtle output fixture like the Atom Mini LED Spotlight could be placed on a gutter mount kit to illuminate the portion on the right. The left side is a bit more tricky, spotlights on gutter mounts would likely just highlight the shingles, which wouldn't be aesthetically pleasing really. LED puck lights could be installed for subtle downlighting from the top level; the downlighting would add a different element to the lighting design, but the installation would certainly be a bit more laborious to surface mount those in that area.
Wow Thanks so much for your reply and recommendations. I never thought of placing the two uplights under the Japanese Maple in a criss cross fashion. Sound interesting and I definitely will play around with that look. Thanks also for confirming the wattage and beam widths of the lights I will purchase. There are just so many wonderful options out there it's difficult to know which options are best. This forum has been really helpful with my lighting design plan!
