Sunday, January 25, 2009

Placing Your Outdoor Lights In The Proper Location

By Kent Higgins

If you do not plan your lighting carefully, it can make or break your landscape. The entire reason for having outdoor lighting is for two purposes:

1.) To improve the value of your garden 2.) To create a certain ambiance in your garden

In more cases than not, you will find your backyard garden decorated with lighting in one of two ways. The first, is an all purpose lighting, with the main function of lighting up the space for use during the night.

The second type of lighting is used with great effort for adding an ambiance or mood to your garden. This king of special purpose lighting, can be witnessed around rock gardens, fountains or being a large tree for lighting and shadowing effects.

One of the main advantages of landscape lighting is not just for lighting, but also to use the shadows cast around artificial or natural objects. There are unlimited chances for a splendid show of lighting effects you can use in your garden. You can use a Japanese garden lamp carved in stone along the path to create a lovely effect for a small budget.

Landscape lighting needs to be planned during the initial design stage. When you want to create a landscape plan for your garden, it is important to note the position of lighting in your plans so that electric wiring can be run underground prior to starting any pathway or lawn construction.

Another important aspect in the field of landscape lighting is the use of solar powered landscape lights. Just as the name suggests, these lights use direct sunlight and convert it into electricity and store it in a batter for later use.

In the early stages of development, these lights used to be powered by a battery made of lead and acid, now this form has been replaced by a nickel-cadmium battery which allows for longer storage and better performance.

The light bulb has now been replaced by an LED light. It used to be a standard incandescent bulb, but this consumed more electricity and has a short life span. If you are planning to use these types in your garden, you must plan their position first, this is to ensure they receive the direct sunlight required for usage.

You should not position these landscaping lights in a place where shadows will fall on trees even where shadows on the house will fall. Look for the areas that get direct sunlight and this will ensure maximum usage of every outdoor light that you will use.

You can cater to the problem of special solar landscape lighting, there are other types available which the solar cell and battery are located away from the light fixture. This means you can put them in a location where they will get direct sunlight exposure. This means wiring will have to be run from the solar cell or battery and to the fixture in your garden. You will gain from planning this at the design stage, which will save you time and length of wiring, which also saves you money.

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