We recently finished our front beds and would like to install some lighting. Not sure how to go about doing so. Not wanting to overdo it, I'm not sure if the beds should include some lights or if just lighting the facade would be adequate. I do feel like I should at least put some light on the walkway step and possibly the porch steps, again not wanting to go overboard. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks, Phil
Hi, Phil. Fellow landscape lighting enthusiast here. Based on what I can see of your property, I've diagrammed your photos to suggest some possible approaches to lighting your home and landscaping. If you've seen any of my previous feedback, one of the main points I try to convey to others is that there isn't any one perfect approach to lighting a home. One thing I encourage people to do is to worry less about following a formula and focus more on coherence. In the first photo I've diagrammed to illustrate what I think is a good solid and very straightforward lighting plan. I've recommended soffit lighting (puck lights in the second level locations shown. I'm recommending gutter mounted spotlights for the gable and ground level spotlights or well lights. The blue circle indicates a location where I would consider a path light. Again, I think this is a very straightforward approach that would define the over all structure of your home and landscaping and also effectively highlight some of the more remarkable aspects of your house. I think if you go with relatively low lumens (no higher than 3W) and you keep your spotlights fairly narrow (no beam spreads wider than 20°), you'll highlight your house and yard in a way that's welcoming without being overwhelming. But as I try to demonstrate in the second photo, you could easily go with fewer lights and still illuminate your house and yard attractively. Maybe you aren't comfortable with the idea of all those soffit lights or maybe you want to highlight your columns in a different way. In this second approach, you're focusing most of your lighting on the shrubbery and those planters. You're still illuminating your house and yard but you're doing it more indirectly (by relying on light that bounces off of or filters through the different plants, trees and shrubs in your yard. You mentioned illuminating your path and keep in mind that there's more than one way to do that. For instance, you may find that simply lighting the house provides sufficient lighting to also illuminate your path. Conversely, you could use one or two fairly bright path lights (3w or 5w should do the trick) and allow the light that bounces off of the path and the shrubbery to softly illuminate the lower level of your home. And really, that's the best place to start creating your lighting plan. People often say they want "subtle" lighting or they don't want to go "overboard". But the thing is, that means different things to different people. So what I encourage people to do to get a good sense of what lighting level they want or don't is to look at examples in their neighborhood or in online photos and work from there. HTH
