The Benefits of Well-Designed Outdoor Lighting

Very few home improvements can support your home like intuitive and well-designed outdoor lighting. It can offer various benefits you may not find without extensive effort (or a lengthy renovation project) when it’s done right.

Our lawn care and landscape team at The Grounds Guys of Gettysburg has outdoor lighting ideas, considerations, and products to suit your property’s exterior. And if you’re on the fence, we’ve listed out the benefits of landscape lighting to make every part of your home pop.

Some Outdoor Lighting Considerations

Before you hire someone to install outdoor lighting, it’s important to be strategic in your product choices and confident about your reasons for wanting outdoor lighting.

Consider the following:

• Durable fixtures that suit your home’s style and function
• The aesthetics of your lighting and how you want it to complement your exterior
• Bringing light balance to your property
• The type of wattage required to illuminate the outdoors adequately
• The amount of space and the size of your property

3 Benefits of Landscape Lighting

While you take inventory of your property’s lighting factors and considerations, let’s get into the benefits of landscape lighting. By the time we wrap things up, you’ll be eager to install landscape lighting to enhance your home’s functionality and security.

1. Enhance Your Home’s Aesthetic

The front of your home is the first thing people will see before they ever get a glimpse inside. Unfortunately, visitors and potential customers can be easily put-off by a dark and poorly lit entrance. As local landscape lighting pros, we recommend outdoor lighting to improve curb appeal, highlight architectural components, and create the ultimate outdoor entertainment space for your friends and family.

IMPROVE CURB APPEAL

It takes approximately seven seconds to form a first impression. Usually, first impressions aren’t based on facts, just your initial feelings about the look and feel of a space. Whether you live in a condo, single-family home, townhouse, or own expansive office space, outdoor lighting—aside from allowing you to see—improves curb appeal. Illuminating the front of your home can give it visual interest that helps differentiate it from similarly styled homes in the neighborhood. After all, you don’t want your property looking like everyone else’s.

SPOTLIGHT YOUR BACKYARD GARDEN & EMPHASIZE ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES

Have you recently finished installing exotic plants and flowers, a stunning fountain, and eye-catching statues in your backyard or adding decorative corbels to exterior windows? Landscape lighting can add a dramatic effect to these aesthetic elements and make them pop even more. The key to spotlighting these outdoor features is strategically placing fixtures, so everything is shone in its best light (pun intended).

Install fixtures 2-3 feet away from the garden element you want to highlight and angle the light at 45 degrees for the best results. A wide-angle low-voltage floodlight is one of the best options to enhance flowers, a water feature, or architectural components, giving it the subtle ambiance it deserves.

CREATE THE ULTIMATE ENTERTAINMENT SPACE

One of the many benefits of landscape lighting is highlighting and enhancing existing spaces. For instance, if you have an area designated for a fire pit, you can breathe life into the space without doing much else except incorporating outdoor lighting. LED outdoor lights are durable and long-lasting (, so you can keep a family get-together going outside for hours.

Remember, when it comes to outdoor lighting and highlighting gardens or entertainment spaces, always be considerate of others and follow Dark Sky Compliance to avoid light pollution.

2. Increase Home Value

Incorporating high-quality products into your outdoor lighting ideas doesn’t inherently mean a significant ROI (return on investment). Exterior lighting has to be a practical and worthwhile addition to your home to potentially increase its value at resale. And the good news is homebuyers are looking for unique exterior features. Between 2003 and 2018, The National Association of Home Builders analyzed five home buyer preferences and found that over 40% of respondents listed outdoor lighting as an essential element.

INCORPORATE SMART HOME CAPABILITIES & FEATURES

Convenience is everything when you’re a homeowner. The opportunity to automate specific capabilities makes owning property easier and more enjoyable. When choosing smart landscape lighting products to increase your home’s value, some of the most worthwhile options include:

• Motioned-Sensor Smart Fixtures – Many homeowners opt for floodlights to help deter criminal activity, but sometimes that’s not enough. Motion-sensor floodlights with a night vision camera turn your property into a secured smart home.
• Wi-Fi-Capable and Bluetooth Smart Bulbs – As often as we’re on our phones and tablets, it only makes sense to have a Wi-Fi-enabled exterior light bulb you can turn on via a smart device. Remember, some Bluetooth bulbs have different wireless protocols and require a separate hub for your wireless connection. Wink and Zigbee are some of the most well-known names in trusted hubs to help enhance smart-enabled outdoor lighting ideas and designs.
• Solar-Powered Pathway Lights – Solar-powered path lighting is both decorative and functional, ensuring adequate visibility and adding to the ambiance of your outdoor space. Unlike the name, solar-powered path lights don’t need the sun to operate. However, they do require photovoltaic energy drawn directly from the sun to charge for use after sunset. You can get smart options that change color automatically or with the click of a remote or various designs that mimic a rose garden.

Whether you want to add some flare to your home’s exterior or incorporate sensible, cost-saving elements, hire outdoor lighting professionals dedicated to accurate installation, one-of-a-kind designs, and strategic placement.

3. Ensure Overall Safety and Security

In 2020, local law enforcement agencies across the country reported 3.9 million criminal incidents to the FBI. Similarly, 2.5 million burglaries were reported, with 66% being home break-ins. One of the ways homeowners are attempting to decrease these numbers and help loved ones feel safer is with outdoor lighting.

DETER CRIMINAL ACTIVITY

Major cities like Detroit, Seattle, and New York City are top of the list for high crime rates, but studies show that outdoor lighting can cut crime by 39%. Although the previous study shows the overarching impact of streetlights, landscape lighting comparably promotes public safety and deters potential trespassers.

PROTECT GUESTS FROM ACCIDENTS

Landscape lighting isn’t always about keeping unknown dangers away from your home. There’s almost nothing more anxiety-inducing than having someone you love get hurt at your home. Often, homeowners choose outdoor lighting because it protects the people they love from tripping hazards and other potential injuries. With outdoor lighting installation, you can mitigate accidents with:

• LED strip lighting under deck stairs or railings
• Under-counter lighting for hardscape features
• Recessed deck lighting
• Deck post lighting
• In-floor lighting

We Offer Year-Round Outdoor Lighting & Affordable Holiday Lighting Installation!

Our outdoor lighting pros at The Grounds Guys of Gettysburg are the experts you can trust to install outdoor lighting quickly and accurately. We install outdoor entertainment lights to keep the party going all night or holiday lighting when you want that winter wonderland effect. You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on installation with big-name exterior lighting companies. Get exceptional exterior lighting ideas and designs at a price you can afford today!