Needing help with the layout for the front of my house landscape lighting. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hi, Jay. I've diagrammed your photo to demonstrate one approach to lighting your house. Unfortunately, I don't have have a clear view of your foundation so bear that in mind when considering my recommendations. Because your house is modestly sized and light in color, imo, you don't need to light it from end to end in order to achieve impressive results. At a minimum, I would illuminate the areas indicated by the yellow graphics. You'll define the overall structure of the facade and if you stay with relatively low lumens (nothing 2W or 3W max) you'll be highlighting sections of the house vs illuminating the entire facade. You may need risers to get above the shrubbery in front of your portico columns. On the section of your house immediately to the left of the pink crape myrtle, I think soffit lights would work well to highlight the walls and the shrubbery and path below. I recommended soffit lights because it looks like you have nice deep soffits, it's something that should be relatively easy to do given the height of that section, and it would add complexity to your overall plan. However, uplighting those sections would work great as well. The orange graphics are areas that I think you might consider lighting as well but I don't think they are crucial. Ultimately, you'll have to decide how much light you want to introduce to the exterior of your home overall. For instance, with your crape myrtles, I think you might want to go a bit brighter than what you use on your house and light more from the outside of the trees. This is both to provide different "layers" of light but also to compensate for the dense foliage on these trees. On your garage doors (also optional), if you have the room beneath the frame of your doors to safely install puck lights, I think you should go for it. Alternatively, if you aren't in love with your wall sconces there, you could swap them out for columnar up or up/down fixtures or barn lights fixtures that focus the light downward. Finally, if you have a place to stake a fixture (either a spot or a well light), definitely consider lighting your flag. Hope this helps to get you started.
