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Jan 15, 2015

Landscape lighting designers typically work from the same book. As diverse as houses in America are, there are three primary types/styles of landscape lighting. We'll shine some light on America's 3 most popular outdoor lighting techniques in this article.

House Lighting

The Abulous UL-103 is a popular fixture to illuminate the front of homes. This fixture will light easily illuminate soffits that are as far as 30' above grade.The first thing most homeowners do is illuminate the front of their house. This is typically accomplished with up-lights that are installed approximately one foot away from the foundation. The fixtures should be pointed straight up toward the soffit. By aiming the fixture straight up you'll reduce harsh bright areas on the lower part of the wall. Your looking to create a gentle scalloped effect on the wall. It is important to make sure you consistently light the home from one end to the other. The whole facade doesn't have to be lit up but you don't want large areas of darkness. Most designers will not place fixtures under windows. Instead you'll see lights placed on either side of windows. Try to highlight and emphasize any unique architectural feature of the house. Material that has relief (like brick or stone) will produce interesting shadow effects that look unique and attractive.

Landscape Lighting

The Abulous WA-102 is great for more subtle flood lighting or gentle flooding of individual objects. Provides a wider beam spread than spotlights, but not overpowering illumination.The next focus of homeowners are trees and plants. As far as trees are concerned, the gnarlier the better. Crepe Myrtles look great with uplighting because of their unique colors and textures. River birches have great bark that creates nice shadows on the trunk. Placed the fixture between the tree and the primary viewing location. This reduces unwanted glare from the perspective of the viewer. Hiding fixtures behind small shrubs is a great trick. This also reduces the chance of the fixture getting damaged. Smaller vegetation might benefit from a gentle wash light like the WA-102. These have a broader beam spread so they are appropriate for the smaller plants.

Path Lighting

Our PL-101 can be outfitted with various shade styles and will project a beam footprint up to 16 feet. These lights provide as much safety as beauty. These are lights that are typically on poles and have shades that frequently resemble a Chinese style of hat. Our PL-101 is a perfect example. These would be great along your walkways and around the pool. As far as spacing is concerned, if a fixture has a 12' beam footprint you can place the lights about 15' apart. You don't necessarily want total overlap with the beam footprint. As with most outdoor lighting, a scalloped look is attractive and is preferable to totally flooding an area with light. Plus you'll save some money on fixtures. There are other techniques and light types such as moon lighting, deck lighting, hardscape lighting and more. Read our fixture page to see the various styles.

Need More Help?

This article is intended to give you a general guideline for the popular design options in the United States. There are many other factors to consider when designing and installing your system. If you would like to go into more detail we are available for discussion. We offer free consultation and design we’d love an opportunity to work with you. Our contact information is below or you may visit our FREE CONSULTATION page to schedule an appointment. Call/text 662-Abulous (662-228-5687) or email contact@abulouslighting.com  

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Kimberly Buckland

Absolute Lighting installed my outdoor flood lights 2 years ago and they are beautiful! They did such a great job that I used them to setup and take down the Christmas lights for the past 2 years. I would highly recommend them. Frank always responds to questions and automatically puts me on the schedule for set up and take down of the Christmas Lights.

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Graham Antin

We love Abulous lighting and have been using them for years  They are very responsive and professional and  will come back no questions asked for any follow up work  Good pricing and highly trustworthy  Frank, the owner, is a true  stand up guy.  I recommend without reservation

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Allan Conlan

Frank and the team at Abulous were great to work with. They came out and retro-upgraded some previous lighting that we had done a few years back and made it look as seamless and continuous as possible. They also worked with us on the best (& most economical) way to light up a hard to reach area of our yard. They also followed up with us after we had another group of workers "disturb" some of the lighting wires and came back out and fixed everything back up again. Very friendly, dependable local resource who do great work. Highly recommend.

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Mike Thomas

After reviewing multiple companies we contracted with Abilous Lighting to create outside accent lighting for our home, backyard patio, walkways, & fire pit.  Their ideas and design were the best!   It was a pleasure working with Frank Hasty, who did  the design, and his crew of Brandon & Rusty who performed the work.  All were excellent to work with.   We are very happy with Abulous Lighting.