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Outdoor lighting can enhance your backyard space in many ways. The addition of lighting makes the backyard into a living space during the warm months in the areas of West and Southwest Michigan. It also makes your backyard safer by providing additional illumination. Homeowners should think about the possibilities for outdoor lighting and some of the considerations that come along with it.
Lighting as an Exterior Improvement
Installing new lighting fixtures outside can provide illumination and serve as an exterior improvement that adds value to your home. For example, wall sconces on an exterior wall instantly make a house look sophisticated. Adding a few lampposts along a walkway provides visual interest, making them an especially fun choice for yards that are plain-looking. Recessed soffit lighting is also a great way to show off your home’s exterior while adding functionality. Similarly, pendant lighting can make a patio or pergola a nighttime hangout.
Increasing Safety With Lighting
The presence of outdoor lighting makes a major difference in the safety of any property. Outdoor lights can illuminate walkways, driveways, patios, porches, and other locations with extensive foot traffic. Likewise, outdoor lighting coverage in a backyard makes going into this space dramatically safer once the sun goes down. If your pet is out in the yard, for example, you could flip on a light and safely look for them.
Automated lights further reduce safety risks. Many people elect to install walkway lights that switch on automatically. This is a great feature if you frequently come home from work late in the evening. You don’t have to think about finding a switch or using an app to turn the lights on. Instead, the system provides light the instant it detects you.
Lighting also reduces your liability risk. Making potential hazards visible allows people to maneuver around your property safely, even in dark conditions. This reduces the risk of injury on your property, especially with the long winter nights we get in Michigan. By extension, that reduces the risk that you’ll face a claim under liability law.
Boosting Security and Deterring Criminals
Outdoor lighting is a key part of deterring criminal activity on your property at night. Modern security lights offer excellent spatial coverage at very high luminosity levels. Automated motion-activated systems can quickly flood an area with light if someone comes onto your property. Lighting will draw attention from neighbors, too. The net effect is that a well-designed outdoor lighting setup with an eye toward security will discourage potential intruders.
Setting the Mood
One of the best aspects of outdoor lighting is the ability to set the ambiance and mood for any occasion. If you want to have an outdoor dinner near dusk on a warm fall night, you can set the lighting on the patio for just the right mood. Modern LED lighting systems also make it easy for homeowners to choose from all kinds of settings. Add a festive mood in seconds by mixing low lights with bright colors, for example.
Entertaining Your Guests
Outdoor lighting significantly expands your entertainment options. A good lighting system can provide coverage throughout your backyard, making the entire area a superb entertainment space. Patios and gazebos become better investments when they have appropriate forms of outdoor lighting.
You can also expand upon your entertaining experience with outdoor lighting. Rather than bringing everyone inside once it gets dark, you can keep entertaining with the right lights. Timed systems and ones with proximity sensors ensure that the light will be steady if everyone is still in the backyard.
Completing Your Work Safely
The right outdoor lighting system can provide you with the ability to work outside for longer periods of time. If you use the entry into your garage for projects, a few lights can keep that space usable after the sun goes down. Especially if you need to squeeze a couple more hours into a weekend project, outdoor lighting allows you to keep everything set up so you can finish the job safely. Outdoor lighting also extends the usefulness of sheds and workshops in the same way.
Considerations for Outdoor Lighting
There are several factors to consider when you’re choosing outdoor lighting for your home. This is in addition to things like budget and personal preference.
Power Output and Delivery
One of the biggest considerations for lighting is how you’ll get power to your outdoor lights. If there’s already electricity available from wires along your exterior walls, it may be simple for our electricians to tap into those. Conversely, you may need to install a trench with conduit to protect the wiring to deliver power to outer structures like sheds and gazebos or lamp posts.
The Importance of Circuit Protection
Outdoor lighting comes with unique risks that often aren’t present indoors. Particularly, the odds are higher that someone might strike an outdoor power line with a tool. Similarly, degraded lights or wires can short-circuit once water gets into them. Even if the line is in good shape, it only takes one spray of a garden hose to affect an outdoor light.
All outdoor lighting systems should include a ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI). A GFCI is a system that detects instability in a circuit and cuts power to it. This is a common condition when water hits a circuit. You may also want to consider an arc-fault circuit interrupter (AFCI). An AFCI is useful for detecting direct damage to a line, such as a shovel cutting into a wire.
Achieving Weather Resistance
Exterior electrical work must hold up to much worse conditions than indoor systems do. In addition to protecting electrical lines from potential shorts, you also need to ensure that the fixtures will last. Likewise, trenched electrical lines must be protected against the possibility of water or ice intrusion.
Considering Adequate Lighting
There is a balancing act between having enough lighting and being a nuisance to neighbors and people passing by. Modern LED lighting systems make it possible to effectively illuminate your backyard like it’s the middle of the day. For some security purposes, that can be beneficial. However, you might want a system with a cooler lighting temperature for entertainment. You can mix lighting systems for both purposes. Likewise, correct lighting placement can ensure that the light hits your backyard and not the neighbors’ windows.
It is also important to think about coverage. While it might be cheaper to install a single light, a bank of lights often provides better coverage. A few softer lights will illuminate an area better than one spotlight in many cases.
Lighting Control and Integration
One of the nicest things about setting up outdoor lighting currently is the many ways you can control it. Smart integration allows you to include scheduling, proximity detection, and even app accessibility. If you want an outdoor light on before you get out of your car to walk inside, you can set it up based on your schedule or even use the app.
Many people in West and Southwest Michigan rely on Service Professor for their outdoor lighting needs. Our electrical services pros can take care of wiring, light installation, routine inspections, and surge protection. Contact Service Professor today to discuss your plans to illuminate your backyard in West or Southwest Michigan.
