Outshine Your Neighbors With These Landscape Lighting Ideas in the Mechanicsburg, PA Area

Homeowners tend to put a priority into how their home and landscape looks during the day, but actually some of the greatest views of a home can happen after dark. Landscape lighting is an essential aspect of any landscape and home design and it can even make your home feel like a very special and memorable destination. As you plan the next steps in your landscape renovation and if you want to make a design impact, know that you can outshine your neighbors with these landscape lighting ideas in the Mechanicsburg, PA area.

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Highlighting Key Features

Every landscape has some features that deserve to be in the spotlight, whether they’re natural or manmade. Spotlighting in the landscape shouldn’t evoke the bright illumination of Las Vegas. Instead, it should tastefully bring various landscape features to attention with targeted yet relatively subtle lighting. Spotlights are typically anchored at ground level or from a higher vantage point such as the walls of a home. They use directly angled light to focus on the beauty of whatever you want to showcase in your landscape, whether it’s a sculpture, series of plantings, a gorgeous stone structure, or an outdoor shelter structure like a pergola.

Layering Techniques

The most effective landscape lighting uses a series of layering techniques that work with the landscape features instead of forcefully trying to illuminate them. A layered lighting system will prioritize lighting in walking and movement areas first, such as the walkway, patio, driveway, and pool deck. From there, lighting will be focused on drawing attention to areas of particular beauty. The other, lesser used areas of your landscape require soft ambient lighting so as to make the entire outdoor living space feel inviting and safe.

Landing Safely

Moving vehicles up and down the driveway requires decent illumination that stays out of the eyeline of drivers and passengers unlike the old-school flood light that blinded anyone driving up to the home. While primarily focused on safety, driveway illumination can also be tasteful and intriguing. Embedded lighting is something you may find on a runway at an airport, but it can be an excellent lighting strategy in paver driveways. Asphalt, gravel, or concrete driveways can be enhanced with low-lying walkway lights that add ambience and beauty while lighting the way. As your friends and family drive up to your house for the first time, they’ll be impressed with such an elegant driveway lighting system.

Moving Effortlessly

The same philosophy of lighting your driveway can be applied to your walkways. A great lighting technique for walkways is by installing low-lying walkway lighting around the edges of your paved surfaces. This will keep a high level of safety while keeping a calming environment, something that high powered overhead lights can’t do. Lights that are low to the ground will be much more successful in creating pleasing spaces.

Building Ambience

One of the most important purposes of landscape lighting is to create a beautiful ambience. The technique called moonlighting shines soft white light downwards through the leaves of a tree or from some other high vantage point. This simulates the calming light of the moon and adds to a safe and welcoming feel all over the landscape.

Encouraging Motion

Subtle movement is a wonderful effect of lighting various landscape water features, such as fountains, waterfalls, or reflecting pools. The dancing ripples create a playful effect on the surrounding landscape and wash around the area with dazzling hues of blue and white. The landscape will appear gorgeous and lively at all points, setting the mood in a wonderful way.

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