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September is National Preparedness Month

September is National Preparedness Month and we wanted to encourage you to take the needed steps to prepare for emergencies in your home, business and community. Living in Kansas one of the events we need to be most prepared for is a tornado. Although tornado season has come and gone, it is never too late [...]

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Great Porches for Entertaining

We love creating outdoor spaces for our clients that can be multi-functional. Porches are great because they can be used for entertaining friends, relaxing after a long day at work, a place for the kids to cool off from summer’s heat… the list is endless. We recently found some great ideas for porches on the [...]

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Why Choose Outdoor Environments

We love to create beautiful outdoor living spaces for our clients. Our work in the Kansas City area has won us awards, but the greatest achievement is seeing the smile on our clients’ faces. If you are looking to build a space that is unique to your needs and environment please give us a call [...]

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Outdoor Furniture 101

We were recently on House and Home and discovered some great tips on how to select the perfect outdoor furniture set for your backyard. When choosing an outdoor furniture set you need to consider all the options and your climate. Do you want something that is more durable than most? Do you want to purchase [...]

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Blueprint for your Outdoor Lighting Design Plan

As I’ve said in previous articles, lighting your home is both an art and a science. You want to achieve height, width, depth and texture with your lighting. This article will focus on creating an architectural lighting design plan for your outdoor lighting.

When you are lighting your house, you want to light it from top to bottom and end to end. The vertical lighting serves a more aesthetic purpose while the horizontal lighting serves the more practical purpose of safety and security.

Let’s start with vertical lighting. How do you go about diagramming which elements of the front of your home to illuminate? Take a look at this picture below.

Outdoor lighting design plan software

If we had lighting design software and input the picture of the home above, the software would probably yield something similar to the image above. Let’s look at the vertical blue lines first.

When you look at the front of your home, you want to note all the key vertical lines made by not only the outside corners of your home but also by your front porch and varying reliefs of your home’s facade. So everywhere you see a line above is where you will want to place a well light that illuminates the vertical line. Depending on the amount of space in between the major verticals you have illuminated, you may need to place additional lighting so as to avoid any dark spots. This differs for each home but generally you don’t want to go more than 3-4 feet without adding another light. So, depending on the width of the foremost facade above, you would likely also have a light either between the two windows or below each of the windows.

The great thing about well lighting is the light source sits close to the home so you will not have any blinding light coming at you when you look out the window.

The next challenge is hitting all the verticals at the top of the home. Ledges, balconies, awnings, porch roofs and other architectural features can create a challenge in achieving illumination all the way to the top of your home. As I said above, this goal serves primarily an aesthetic purpose but if you’re designing custom exterior lighting, the last thing you want to to is fail to illuminate all of your home.

Take a look at this picture.

house lighting photos pictures

In the first picture above, you might have noticed the alert that the ledges would cause a challenge. This is because the light that sits below will get caught at this ledge and the areas above it will have dark spots. So, you will want to put some small lights above the ledges to illuminate all the way up to both roof tops.

What are your thoughts about this outdoor lighting design planning?

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How to make your deck a safe place for entertainment and fun

Making your home the hub for fun and entertainment can be as easy as creating the space and inviting folks in. But it’s important to make sure your outdoor living spaces are as safe as they are fun. If you already have a deck, give it a thorough spring checkup. See if you have any loose railings or balusters, and inspect the structure of your deck for rotting wood, corroded or loose fasteners and any mold and mildew.

If you find that your deck needs repairs, consider updating it with new composite decking and railing. Latitudes, a leading composite decking brand, offers several unique decking and railing combinations, each offering superior strength and resistance against the rotting, fading and warping that typically occur with wood due to varying weather cycles.

Low-maintenance composite decking never requires staining or sanding, and is available in several natural-looking colors. Latitudes Capricorn composite decking offers the rich look of tropical hardwood. From a safety standpoint, all of the deck surfaces are slip-resistant and splinter-free—definitely a consideration when you’re designing a space to entertain.

Are you planning to build a new deck this year? Before you begin construction, think carefully about how you’re going to use your deck. Create a space for an outdoor kitchen or barbecue area, and perhaps a place for relaxing and keeping an eye on the kids. You might even want to consider a place for dining.

You could also consider installing deck stones by Latitudes. Use these self-draining, real stone tiles to create a fire or grease barrier under your grill. You can also use these stones if incorporating a fire pit into your deck plans—making it a favorite hangout for teens and late-night marshmallow roasting.

When safety is paramount, be sure to plan for lighting. There are many new products that provide direct or ambient lighting to help make your deck and outdoor living area safer for you and your guests, even late into the night. Latitudes and Deckorators both offer low-voltage, LED recessed deck lights, which can be set to turn on automatically at dusk, adding a measure of security to your home.

Deck lighting using eco friendly solar lighted post caps come in styles ranging from the basic to the dramatic. The new Dynasty copper post cap light offers Asian flair in a Craftsman-inspired copper and gunmetal that offers illumination and high style. Post cap lights are designed to fit on virtually any railing post on your deck. And with solar caps, no wiring is required.

If your existing deck simply needs to be refreshed—or needs sturdier rails to make it safe—the easiest way to update is with new balusters or rails. Deckorators offers a durable, powder-coated aluminum exterior railing system that is sold in kits, complete with rails, post sleeves and post caps to help put a whole new face on a tired-looking deck.

This deck building season, consider spending some of your home improvement dollars on the safety of your deck and the outdoor living areas of your home. These entertainment spots not only beckon to friends and neighbors, but add safety and value to your home.

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Lighting rooflines can be a tricky challenge

With outdoor lighting, it’s important to accentuate both the width and the height of home’s facade.

picture of landscape well light with cover The best architectural lighting is done using well lights that are placed in fairly short proximity to the home. The benefits of well lights for architectural lighting are numerous. First, they cast a wide glow based on the shape of the mouth of the fixture. Secondly, the light angle can be adjusted and angled to illuminate particular architectural features such as columns very effectively.

One additional and very important benefit of well lighting is that the light is not cast into the eyes of the homeowner. Since the lights sit close to the home, and since the light is cast straight up, the owner can look out the window without having any light shining directly in their eyes.

The objective of architectural lighting is to illuminate the home’s features while being discreet as possible with the light source and ensuring that we achieve our objectives of lighting the home from side to side and all the way up to the roof lines.

Here is a home that provided a challenge for illuminating the roof line but there is a very good solution to overcome this challenge.

Roof lighting landscape lighting

When the architectural lighting comes from below, your porch roof, 2nd story patios and other architectural elements that protrude from the house hinder the light from fully illuminating that vertical.

So, in order to overcome this challenge, have your outdoor lighting designer/installer place bullet lights at each side of the base of your roof line.

bullet lights for roof lighting outdoor lighting perspectives

You’ll notice here that the bullet lights actually match the shade of the home. That’s no coincidence. These light fixtures were powder coated to match the exact shade of the home. If you’re like me, when you first saw the close-up of this picture, you went back to review the initial picture to see if you could find these fixtures in that photo. In fact, there are 4 of these fixtures. Each of the 2 protruding roof lines are illuminated by 2 powder coated bullet lights.

Here’s another one for you. These lights are attached to this tree to shadow light or moon light the walkway below. This adds beauty, depth, dimension and last but not least – safety.

moon lighting landscape lighting

Now take a look at these trees from the bottom – can you find the fixtures you see in the close-up above?

landscape lighting pictures moon lighting

It takes a little extra work to install roof line lighting and moon lighting but a professional outdoor lighting designer will be well equipped to not only install this type of lighting but to design the best custom solution for your home.

Look at the beautiful effect of moon lighting a tree.

landscape lighting pictures tree lighting

Enjoy the texture that the soft tree branch shadows cast on your lawn, patio, deck or walkway while enjoying enhanced safety for walking and outdoor living areas.

www.outdoorlights.com

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Checklist when buying outdoor lighting

Picking good outdoor lighting can be a real challenge. It’s hard to know exactly what to look for. I recently walked several neighborhoods in Nashville with an expert outdoor lighting designer discussing lighting design for that home. Outdoor lighting design is an art but here are a couple key objectives to consider when selecting outdoor lighting for your home:

Width
Height
Depth
Texture

Outdoor Architectural Lighting

Width -

One of the first things to consider in your outdoor lighting design is how to elongate the width of your home. This has two key benefits. From an aesthetic perspective, outdoor lighting makes your home sing at night. So you want to show it off from end to end. But, even more importantly, you want to make sure to have light at the far ends of your home’s facade on both sides. Intruders are much less likely to hide or move in illuminated areas than in darkened areas.

Height -

The next thing to consider is showing the full height of your home. Good outdoor lighting reaches the peaks of your roof line to really show off your home at night. After all, outdoor lighting is an investment in aesthetics as well as in safety and security. Your home’s facade may have multiple peaks in the form of dormers, or a multi-tiered facade. Make sure your lighting illuminates each of those peaks. Sometimes this can be done with one light or sometimes you may need an extra light or a light elevated off the ground to accomplish this lighting objective. Take a look at how each of the 3 peaks of this home are illuminated giving height to this home.

Depth -

Porches and balconies serve a functional purpose but they also add dramatically to the facade of your home by giving it depth. Dormers and other architectural features do the same. Your outdoor lighting design should cast light from different areas so as to allow these features to be pronounced and therefore to make your home look even better at night. See how the unique architectural features of this home, illuminated, give great depth and warmth to this evening illumination.

Texture -

Textured walls are all the rage now. On the outside of your home, the subtle textures of the brick on your chimney or small architectural details of your home’s facades, when illuminated, really make your home pop at night. Illuminating these details gives warmth to your outdoor illumination and invites guests to feel at home. See how this home’s columns pop when illuminated with their outdoor lighting.

Extend your architectural lighting to include your landscape lighting

Take a look at how the landscape lighting and architectural lighting on this home come together. The landscaping extends forward from the home giving the perfect opportunity to show it off at night while adding to the lighting depth.

Take a test drive

Ask for a night-time demo. This way you can see what you’ll be getting, why it’s designed that way, and even work with the lighting designer to fine tune and tweak your lighting design for the best overall presentation. When they come out, tell them about your safety concerns, how you use your yard at night and what you would like better illuminated for your outdoor living and outdoor needs at night. Reputable companies will look forward to this, welcome it, and be willing to invest their time before you make your investment.

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