Homeowners love accentuating the exterior design for their residential properties. A lot of money goes into developing a beautiful design to showcase the best features of your house and yard in the best manner. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense that your exterior design falls victim to nightfall. This is when you can use the latest LED lighting applications to put your exterior design on display.
How Do You Plan for Your Home Exterior Lights?
It is recommended that you hire the services of a professional company so that they can plan the entire installation phase. In addition to planning, professional companies are also experts in identifying and highlighting the best features of your exterior design.
They bring years of experience to the table, and you can benefit greatly from their experience. However, if you still want to do everything by yourself, you will have to sit down and plan how to install your LED lighting applications in different places for maximum coverage. Here are some design tips for you.
Trees
A lot of homeowners often make the mistake of highlighting only the foliage of the trees in their yard. According to professionals, if you decide to use ground LED lights to highlight the beautiful trees in your front yard, you need to make sure that you also cover their trunks in light.
Otherwise, you will end up only highlighting the foliage of the tree. It will look like a hovering UFO in the middle of the night. Instead of offering a pleasing image of your exterior design, it will end up ruining the beauty of your home. So, you should plan ahead and get powerful lights that can cover the trunk as well as the top foliage of the trees.
On the other hand, if you want to illuminate the foliage from above, you should make sure to use powerful LED downlights that can cover the entirety of the trunk without crossing their beams. Multiple beams should cover different parts of the tree for an even distribution of the light. Uniformity is always beautiful.
Garden
Some homeowners plant hundreds of different LED fixtures in their garden. This is extremely wrong as it will provide continuous illumination throughout the garden. The core purpose here should be to invest in LED fixtures that offer different individual pools of light. These distinctive pools of light will help guide the eyes from one section of the garden through the next.
Showcasing the entire garden is not always the best approach to highlight the beauty of your plants. You want to offer a contrast among different sections of your garden. Therefore, you can easily achieve this by investing in multiple LED fixtures to highlight different sections of your garden.
Professionals recommended a minimum distance of 20 feet between different LED fixtures. This way, you will be able to cover the maximum portion of your garden without offering continuous illumination. It will help set boundaries among different sections and offer a seamless transition from one portion of the garden to the next.
Focal Points
You can use flood LED lights or wash LED fixtures to highlight the focal points of your exterior design. The focal points of your exterior design are the ones that deserve maximum attention. Similarly, these focal points are also the most beautiful elements of your exterior design. Therefore, you should use wash LED fixtures to highlight them with the right amount of light.
These focal points can be a water fountain, a tree swing, or a koi pond. You can use multiple LED fixtures depending upon the size of individual focal points. For example, if you want to highlight a beautiful water fountain in your garden, you can use two different LED applications on either side of the fountain.
These LED applications should never cross their beams. Otherwise, the beautiful details of your water fountain or the focal point will be washed away due to the high intensity of beams. Make sure that individual beams highlight individual points of your focal point. It will bring uniformity and a seamless transition from one detail to the next.
What Are the Different Types of LED Lighting for Home Exterior?
There are hundreds of different types of LED lighting fixtures for outdoor applications and home exterior. Let’s explore these types in detail and see what each category brings to the table.
Garden LED Lights
As obvious from the name, these LED fixtures are appropriate for highlighting the best features of your garden. Whether you have multiple rows filled with beautiful plants or you have tall green trees in your garden, highlighting them in the right way should not be a difficult task. This is why you can take advantage of garden LED lights.
Such LED lights are specifically designed to cover a maximum radius of 20 feet or more around them. Therefore, these lights can easily cover a wider area than other options in the market. Garden LED lights come in a vertical design. These are usually 18 to 24 inches above the ground level, excluding the installation portion. These also have canopies on top.
These canopies reflect the light down into planting beds or your beautiful plants. This way, you can protect your plants from direct light and use reflected light to highlight the best features of your garden.
There are hundreds of different styles and finishes for garden LED lights. There are also garden LED lights that can be used as pathway markers while simultaneously highlighting your garden. The final choice depends upon the area of coverage and your intended use.
Wash LED Lights
The exterior design for your home consists of several elements combined together into a beautiful design. Some of these elements will be flat in terms of structure. Flat facades, fences, plain garden walls, old tree trunks are such elements. You cannot use harsh or strong led lights for highlighting such plain elements. This is why you need something soft and diffusing to showcase such elements of your exterior design.
This is where wash LED fixtures can come in handy. These LED lights are designed to throw a soft and diffused light that can cover a wide area without overcompensating for the darkness. In addition to this, wash LED fixtures are also ideal for a uniform light across a giant structure.
For instance, if you want to highlight in your entire wall, you can use a watch LED light at least 30 feet away from your wall. It will cover the entire wall without throwing any bright or intense light on the structure. In general, such LED fixtures for the home exterior also come with dimmers. This way, you can easily control the amount of light and the softness of your led light without any issues.
Bullets LED Lights
If you are looking for something compact and versatile to highlight your home exterior, bullet LED fixtures are ideal for you. These are compact fixtures that come with powerful bulbs. Moreover, these do not cover a wide area and project a narrow beam to highlight small details of your exterior design. Such LED fixtures are ideal for showcasing a single row of plants or a tree trunk. You can also use bullet LED fixtures to highlight a water fountain or a small structure.
Downlight LED Fixtures
You must have gathered from the name that such LED fixtures point in a downward direction. Therefore, such LED applications are often used in high positions, such as tall trees or trunks. These can cover a wide area in your garden, and people often use these to highlight their beautiful gardens, lawns, pathways, or driveways.
Some people also use downlight LED fixtures in tree trunks to highlight the foliage of the tree. This way, you can achieve a moonlit effect for your beautiful garden. These LED fixtures come pre-fitted with powerful bulbs that can project a cowl-shaped shroud on a wider area.
In addition to this, you can also control the amount of light and intensity of light with the help of dimmers. These fixtures come with multiple control options to help you control their intensity and diameter without any issues.
Why Should You Choose LED Lights for Your Homes Exterior?
There are hundreds of different options available in the market other than LED lighting fixtures. So, why should you choose LED lighting over other options? LED lighting fixtures bring plenty of benefits and advantages to the table. These lights last longer than other options in the market and also consume lesser energy to work throughout the night. Let’s take a look at the topmost benefits of using LED lighting fixtures for your home exterior.
Easy Installation Method
One of the best features of using LED lighting fixtures for your home exterior is that such applications come with an easy installation method. This means that you do not necessarily have to call a professional company to help you install these fixtures in your garden or tree trunks. All you need is a ladder and the right tools to install these by yourself.
In addition to the easiness of installation, these LED lights also take lesser time for installation. This allows you to save your precious time and you can quickly get done with the installation phase.
Affordable
Similarly, LED lights and applications are also comparatively cheaper than other traditional options in the market. Since you do not have to rely on a professional company to help you install these fixtures in your garden, you can save a lot of money on installation costs.
Moreover, there are no complicated cables involved in the process of installation. This further allows you to save a lot of money on having to buy powerful and durable cables for your lighting fixtures.
However, you should know that you may have to pay a higher initial cost for these fixtures. On the other hand, the low maintenance requirements and a long-lasting life cycle will pay off in the long run. According to an estimate, LED lighting fixtures for the home exterior will help you save up to 50% as compared to halogen systems in a decade.
Less Energy Consumption
LED lighting for the home exterior will also help you save a lot of money on utility bills and costs. These fixtures do not require as much energy as traditional halogen systems. According to professionals, LED applications only use one-tenth of the energy required for standard lighting fixtures for the home exterior. Therefore, you can reduce your utility bills while maximizing the beauty of your exterior design.
Maximum Control
You can also gain maximum autonomous control over the intensity and diameter of your light if you decide to go with LED lighting fixtures for the home exterior. These fixtures come with pre-installed dimmers or remote-control options that allow you to easily control the intensity of the light and the lumen capacity, depending upon your preferences. You can also increase or decrease the coverage area and diameter depending upon your choices.
Final Word
LED lighting for the home exterior is among the most affordable and versatile methods to showcase the best features of your home. These modern fixtures last longer than other options and also consume less energy to offer higher performance. Therefore, you can enjoy cost-effectiveness, maximum performance, and control with these LED applications.
For more information or questions, our team here at Oregon Outdoor Lighting is here to answer any inquiries you may have.