While many people are familiar with the use of outdoor lighting on landscapes as a way to highlight areas of the garden, water features, trees or even to create illumination for a walkway or path, it is also an ideal match for hardscapes. As a basic outdoor lighting design guide for hardscapes, there are a few considerations that are essential to keep in mind.
When developing an outdoor lighting design guide for your hardscape area, visual appeal, the spacing of the lights, as well as considerations with regards to the style of the lights will be important. By having experts work with you, and your construction team during the building of the hardscaped area, you can install the lights permanently, providing discrete, durable lighting that is set up and ready to use immediately.
Downlighting Along Natural Borders
As part of the outdoor lighting design guide, looking for the natural borders in the hardscape layout will be a primary consideration. These natural borders can include the walls of the area, but it may also include small and soft downlighting options around edges and raised areas within the hardscape.
A great example of this would be around the underside of the ledge of a hot tub or spa in a hardscaped area. With these small lights installed just under the lip of the edge the light shines down onto the hardscape surface, clearly illuminating the ledge but avoiding glaring or bright overhead types of lights that take away from the natural view of the evening sky.
As another element in for an outdoor lighting design guide, consider matching these downlights with the same type of lights with steps and railings in the area. This brings the entire design together and will also allow you to use garden lights or walkway lights that blend in perfectly.
Grill Areas and Outdoor Kitchens
As part of our outdoor lighting design guide, you may also want to have subtle, ambient types of outdoor lighting around the grill or outdoor kitchen area of your hardscape. This provides a gentle amount of light for easy movement into the area, and can even be used to create a romantic touch for that special dinner under the stars.
Of course, as part of any outdoor lighting design guide you will want to have brighter and more direct light for actual food preparation and cooking, and these fixtures can work independent of the ambient lighting, giving you maximum control of when and where you need additional light.
