Good Afternoon. I am in the middle of planning landscaping improvements to our home. last year we painted the house and installed the new garage doors. I also worked on the deck to match the garage doors. my next step is to update the landscaping and then install lighting. I have the concepts for what I want to do plant-wise and have included some pictures as well for reference. I view this lighting project to be 3 different areas (maybe 4 now that I have perused this forum and puck lights in the middle of the garage doors would look cool I think). I would like to see if anyone had thoughts or different ideas than what I'm thinking below. Zone 1: Stonewall We will be installing 3 symmetric rows. the front row will be northern lights tufted grass (5), the middle will be winter gem boxwood topiaries (6), the last row will be 3 standard limelight hydrangea trees. for this area, I am planning on installing 3 path lights across the front of the bed where the driveway is. I was also thinking of 2 round wall wash lights set a little in front and to the left and right of the middle hydrangea tree. Zone 2: bed under the Casement windows. I will be installing northern lights tufted grass (3-4) and also refreshing the stone with river rock or black rock. I would like to do two path lights at the corners of the bed, but not sure what else could be done in that corner as it gets dark and shadowy. Zone 3:Garage Wall. I have uploaded the conceptual design for reference but was thinking of just 3 all-star spotlights on the left, middle and right. I'm not sure how well that will light up the Japanese maple that is all the way at the end though. Any help would be appreciated. very excited to do this project, and from perusing around it seems like everyone else shares that enthusiasm.
Loving the Brady house vibe, gtj105! Sounds like a decent plan so far. Lighting those garage doors immediately came to my mind also and maybe letting some of the beam spread from your path/area lights spill over to show off your porch. I love the stone wall so I’m torn between your approach and flooding the full length with light to create a backdrop for your trees. You didn’t ask about landscaping but I would encourage you to consider adding a curve or two to one of your planting areas. Your home is spectacular and I think some rounded edges would create a nice contrast to the stripes and geometric shapes that make up your house, garage doors, windows and planting beds.
Thanks for the input. For the path lights I was going to use the "flat hat" ones, but are you suggesting the "Max Spread" for path lights to get more of the deck? I want to focus on the stone wall and thought i was considering that with the 2 Floods lights. could you explain the difference in your approach some more? thanks for the landscape input, we had already decided to make some curves to complement that. I am also not sure which puck light to use that would complement the other lights. should all of the lighting be at the same brightness level or should I have the path lights the lowest lumen and the uplights/floods one step up?
I misread what you wrote initially regarding the stone wall and I think your approach is just fine. I don’t know that there’s hard and fast rules but for the sake of cohesion, it’s a good idea to have continuity in level and color temperatures, at least on the house. For example, if you’re lighting the garage doors and the painted grey (?) surfaces of your house, you would try to use the same lumens (or as close to the same lumens as possible) for all your fixture lamps. I have a red brick colonial with an adjoining red brick wall. I think it would look “off” if that sidewall was a lot brighter than the rest of the house. But in a situation like yours—where your stone wall is its own distinct feature—I would feel comfortable taking more liberties. You’ll more than likely be going with 2700K warm white puck lights. There are two models, one with higher lumens than the other. Choose 2700K lamps of the same (or similar) brightness level for your other fixtures and you can’t go wrong. Because I think I could easily overwhelm you with TMI, I highly recommend that you spend some time perusing the site at your leisure. Have a look at some of the how-to pages and do some window shopping, to see what fixtures, transformer, and accessories you might want to use for your project.
