Planning outdoor landscape lighting with a rustic feel offers you the ultimate in decorating choices.
Rustic outdoor lighting is the perfect accompaniment to a rustic influenced homestead, cottage or barn because the indoors and outdoors blend into a picturesque vista of warmth and homeliness.
Transforming Your Home From Daylight to Night Light
Approaching a home at night for the first time creates a wealth of impressions about the people who live inside.
A well designed and cleverly thought out rustic lighting plan enhances the feeling of warmth and coziness that rustic design encompasses.
During daylight hours, the sheer volume of light gives your home and surrounds a flat appearance. But when night falls, you have the opportunity to create a new, dramatic landscape.
At night time, a well designed outdoor lighting plan can produce an array of dazzling effects that speak glowingly of those who live there.
Shapely trees, sculpture, garden effects and water features can be highlighted, while less than perfect aspects of your landscape can fall into shadow, enhancing the sense of depth and dimension.
Planning Your Rustic Outdoor Landscape Lighting
Clever outdoor landscape lighting can be more dramatic than indoor lighting.
Here are some landscape lighting tricks to give your home and surrounds a sense of rustic pleasure.
- People are drawn to the brightest source of illumination, so it makes sense to constructively lead your visitors where you want them to go.
- One of the biggest mistakes people make when planning their outdoor lighting is using high wattage bulbs. Not only can the light be a glaring annoyance, it can actually make it harder to see the surrounding environs.
Planning outdoor landscape lighting with a rustic feel means you can avoid harsh glare because most rustic outdoor lighting relies on a soft, diffuse glow.
- Decide on which design features of your home and garden you wish to highlight, starting with the front entrance as a focal point.
rustic outdoor lights
Would you like to highlight mature trees and their positioning in relation to the house? Does your outdoor entertainment area require special lighting effects for guests?
Are there pathways that require lighting? Do you have a pool you wish to illuminate? Or perhaps your rustic cottage has deeply recessed gable roofing you would like to enhance?
- Once you have selected the areas you wish to light and the areas you would like to remain in shadow, the next step is to plan the direction in which the light will travel.
The type of lighting you choose and the direction of the globe are going to dictate where the light falls.
For example, a small wooden portico at the entrance to your home would suit gentle recessed lighting in the four corners of the ceiling spreading down and outwards and increasing the feeling of space around your doorway.
On the other hand, wide columns at the entrance look magnificent when gently lit from below, so the light shines upwards.
You can exaggerate the appeal of wide eaves often associated with rustic cabins by placing low voltage floodlights or small lanterns under the roofline. This allows the light to wash the areas around the eaves and highlight design features, garden beds or the elegant simplicity of the outside walls.
- An important outdoor lighting design aspect to consider is the way in which outdoor lighting works in conjunction with indoor lighting. The general rule of thumb is to produce a level of illumination outdoors that is at the very least equal to that inside the home.
When used correctly, outdoor illumination can appear to increase the dimensions of the indoor areas.
As an example, gently lighting a garden bed outside a window can make the garden feel like part of the room. A porch leading off the family room can be lit with rustic chandeliers to create the feeling of bringing the outdoors inside.
Planning outdoor landscape lighting is not difficult – it’s merely a matter of taking the time to view your home and its surrounds as a whole, and then planning your outdoor lighting to best capture the entire scene.
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