How to Choose the Best Landscape Lights for Your Home

Choosing the proper outdoor lighting for a home involves taking the time to determine your needs. By truly assessing your needs before making any purchases, you will be able to determine what you need while you are at a lighting store. Otherwise, you may choose lighting that ends up being inefficient and find yourself needing to make one or more returns.

Instructions

1. Evaluate the needs you have for outdoor lighting. Do you live in a well-lit area on a busy street, or do you live in a remote location? If you live in a well-populated area with abundant street lights, your landscape lighting needs will not be as great as they will be in a remote area.

2. There are two types of outdoor lighting: aesthetic lighting and safety lighting.

3. Aesthetic lighting will illuminate beautiful objects in your yard such as trees, shrubs and decorative accents such as fountains.

4. Mount aesthetic lighting in the ground.

5. Once mounted, be sure that the light is shining upwards as much as possible while shining on the object. This lighting position will allow the lighting to play with shadows and create architectural interest.

6. You may want to try colored lights in addition to regular lights for added interest.

Tips & Warnings

• Be sure all landscape lighting is installed according to manufacturer's directions.