When homeowners first began utilizing a garden light in their landscape, it was nothing more than a simple light along a path. Now it has been cultivated and grown into a mesh of exterior entry lighting for safety and for aesthetic qualities. With an exterior garden light you can indicate to yourself, your family, and your friends where the entry is. You can use them for businesses as well as homes. They can also light up the building numbers. It has become a growing trend to emphasis aesthetically pleasing entry lights. In terms of quantity, there is some debate between whether a single garden light or a string of garden lights is more aesthetically pleasing.
When you combine the aesthetics of a garden with the usefulness of an entry way light, you must also combine decorating principles. It is good to create an inviting lighting system which offers uniformed levels of lights. Instead of using a single bright garden light, try integrating many lower-light fixtures near ground level. This offers the same safety of a single, bright entryway light, with the appeal of a creative garden. Generally using a single garden light will be too bright and therefore, all areas leading to the single light are dimmer. They are generally, in fact, too dim to provide any safety. With multiple garden fixtures, you can create lighting in areas which have key interest to you such as next to signs, doorways, or stairs. This also helps to evenly distribute the light around your garden. With a mixture of task lighting and accent lighting, you can use exterior garden lights to highlight the exterior features of your home while providing you with security and safety. You can integrate up-lights or post lights to accomplish the aforementioned lighting goals.
In terms of a garden light, a glare is caused by two things. The first is too much contrast and the second is a direct view of a light source which is unshielded. If there is too much contrast the rest of your exterior garden will remain in the dark. A desirable contrast ratio is less than five to one. You want to softly accent your garden, walkway, doorway, or stairs without creating a glare. The importance of a garden light cannot be underestimated, as it is responsible for creating the first impression of your home. It will take the eye a much longer time to adapt to excessively lit buildings or homes as well as darker outside walkways. Both of these make it difficult to see.
While causing visual difficulties, having excessive lighting can cause other problems as well. The additional light will reflect off of any surrounding surfaces such as wall and walkways. This reflection bounces into the sky which creates what is referred to as “light pollution”. This light trespass will invade any adjacent homes or buildings. The “light pollution” then reduces the ability to view things in the sky such as the moon and the stars. This compromises the quality of view and life for everyone. Overall, with continued “light pollution” entire neighborhoods and cities will experience brighter nights because of newer, efficient sources which use higher light levels with lower power consumption.
