Spruce up your garden with new lighting this spring
As the new season ushers in warmer weather, we all look forward to spending more time outdoors. It only makes sense that now is the ideal time to get your garden summer-ready. But it requires more than just freshening up your flower beds. While keeping the exterior of your home well-lit is important year-round, Spring is the season to identify where you can improve your outdoor lighting so that your home and garden look their very best this season and the next.
Before you spend money and time on new fixtures, consider the following points to ensure you install your new outdoor lighting strategically.
COLOUR MATCHING
Using bulbs with different colour temperatures can give your garden a disjointed feel. To achieve a visually pleasing look, check that the colour temperature of all your bulbs match. While warm temperature lighting is often preferred for indoor spaces, cool temperature lighting works better outdoors because it brings out the colour of the foliage. Be sure to check the number given on the box before purchasing as “warm white” and “cool white” can mean different things across manufacturers. 300k bulbs produce the best temperature of light for outside, so aim for that if you can.
HIDE CABLES AND SEAL CONNECTIONS
Electrical cables that are left exposed or lying about the garden run the risk of being damaged - either by accident when digging or from being gnawed at by animals. Use mesh-reinforced tubing to protect your cables. You should also make sure your electrician seals all of the electrical connections so that they are waterproof. Moisture can travel up the cables and damage them. Doing these two things will save you the hassle (and expense) of replacing the cables.
THINK LONG TERM
You may be sprucing up your garden with new lighting this Spring, but keep in mind that the lighting you install this season will probably be there throughout the year. This means it needs to handle all types of weather as the seasons change. Spring may be mild, but Summer brings about scorching temperatures and Winter can be icy in parts of the country. You also need to think of the changes your garden goes through. Lighting placed in flourishing flower beds now may appear stark and harsh in the winter months when the leaves and blossoms have fallen. Solar garden spikes are an ideal solution for this. They have no wiring and are easy to move around the garden as the seasons change.
LESS IS MORE
It’s easy to get carried away when planning your outdoor lighting, but keep in mind that your garden is not a sports pitch. An overly lit garden looks unwelcoming and one dimensional. You don’t need lots of fixtures - you need a select few placed in strategic spots. In the subtle art of outdoor lighting, there is a fixture for every area or feature you wish to illuminate. Take the time to walk around your garden during the day and draw up a rough sketch of where you would like lighting so that you don’t have too many fixtures in one spot and not enough in another.