outdoor garden lighting ideas Tag

Garden Lighting integrated with Swimming pool landscaping design.

5 Great Ideas for Garden Lighting

Garden Lighting for Landscaping: Melbourne Gardens

The well-planned installation of lighting can draw attention to your garden’s focal point. It will make your garden stand out as a place of interest throughout the evening and during the night. Even relatively inexpensive lighting systems will make your garden a magical place. If you have a small garden, then garden lighting will help to highlight your garden’s vertical space, drawing your eye away from any fences or walls, or making a wall more attractive. This will give your garden a whole new dimension, especially if it is designed to go with suitable plantings and hard landscaping like water features such as garden fountains.

Fountain illumination being installed on a fountain - Reds Landscaping and Design — *Garden Lighting - Lighting being installed on a fountain.*

Why does light make objects appear larger?

When Galileo Galilei used his newly constructed telescope to observe the planets in the 1600s he noticed something that he could not explain. When looked at by the naked eye Venus appeared larger than Jupiter however through the telescope the situation was reversed. Much later German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz described this optical illusion in his Treatise on Physiological Optics. Recently, neuroscientists discovered that dark stimuli result in a response that accurately represents their size. On the other hand light stimuli results in an exaggerated neural response that makes the stimulus appear larger than they really are. This optical illusion can be used in swimming pool landscape design and small garden design to make a pool or garden appear larger than they really are.

Garden Lighting Installation

What are the best outside lights?

As well as using up lighting, downlighting can be used to create a moonlight effect to highlight plant textures. For best effect, it is important that your garden lighting electrician works alongside your horticulturist and hardscaper. Even though much of the system is low voltage, we recommend using a qualified electrician to ensure all of the power supply transformers and 240 volt connections are done safely. Intercoms and security cameras can be considered at the same time. With the latest LED lighting technology and the use of timer systems, modern outside lighting is not only cheap to run, it will enhance your home security. If you have one of the older garden lighting systems, it might be worthwhile having it looked at to see if some of the modern LED systems can save you money on running costs. Another advantage is that LED systems are also very low maintenance, with the lights themselves lasting a very long time before replacement is required.

Canary Island Palm - Reds Landscaping and Design — *Tree Lighting highlighting the rich texture of this well pruned Canary Island Palm (Phoenix canariensis). It also helps to have great Palm tree cleaning skills.*

Lighting in Garden Design

Ideally, the lighting design should be planned at the initial concept stage of your garden design. This will allow for the necessary infrastructure to be incorporated into trenches and under pathways, alongside drainage and irrigation. Doing this way will save you money and also give you a more reliable result. Swimming pools and other exterior lighting can also be incorporated into the overall result. If you have an existing garden, garden lighting can still be added using some of the new trenching techniques available. However, great care needs to be taken not to disturb existing irrigation systems.

Highlight on a grey stone garden wall - Reds Landscaping and Design — *Glowing light in the grass with a stone garden wall in background.*

Swimming pool landscaping design - Reds Landscaping and Design — *Garden Lighting integrated with Swimming pool landscaping design.*

Garden lighting can be integrated with your swimming pool landscape design to create some great effects. The uplighting of the trees draws your eye away from the city skyline behind. The spotlighting and swimming pool lighting make the objects appear larger than they really are.