When you’re enjoying a comfortable evening outdoors with friends and family, there is nothing more disappointing than needing to retreat back inside because of the onset of darkness. Just because the sun goes down, that doesn’t mean your good time needs to end. With the help of a few creative ideas, your home’s exterior space can be enhanced with lighting fixtures that allow for your backyard entertainment to go hours into the night.
Our Raleigh outdoor lighting company wants to help you extend the usable hours of your backyard entertaining. We have some great ways you can use outdoor lighting ideas to enhance your backyard, allowing you to swim, barbeque, and create memories late into the midnight hours with the people you love.
Path Lights
One of the best ways to allow your visitors and yourself to navigate your property in the moonlight is through the use of path lights. Path lights enhance your backyard space by allowing for an easy, safe way to get from the front to the back yard, find your way to the porch or pool, or if you have a large backyard space enjoy the beauty of your property no matter the time of night.
Path lights are available in either low-voltage or solar-powered options, both featuring light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for energy efficiency. Path lights can be installed in many different ways and with fixtures that suit your home’s overall aesthetic and your own personal design preferences.
When considering the best path lights for your backyard, our residential outdoor lighting professionals suggest narrowing down the overwhelming amount of choices on the market with a few simple criteria. For instance, do you prefer freestanding lights like lanterns along the pathways or would you rather opt for built-in lighting directly on the path? Do you want light focused directly on the pathways only or would you rather have ambiance lights that illuminate not only the path but the surrounding area as a whole?
Your path and walkway options are limitless. If you’re unsure of what you prefer, check out Carolina Outdoor Lighting’s outdoor lighting gallery for examples of Raleigh area homes we’ve installed path lighting in, and determine the type of lighting that best fits your outdoor vibe.
Stair Lights
Similar to path lighting, stair lights help you as a homeowner ensure that your property is safe from slip-and-fall accidents or stumbling in the dark and missing a step or two that can lead to unnecessary injury. Particularly in backyards where children are playing, having well-lit stairs to the porch, patio, or pool is important for safety. Additionally, stair lighting adds that extra ambiance that highlights important areas of your yard in beautifully lit ways.
Stair lights are usually installed to be directly on the surface of the steps themselves, on the wall between the steps, or alongside the bottom of a wall that surrounds steps or stair railings. While some homeowners often overlook the necessity of stair lights, a lot of people do not realize that stair lighting is not only functional but can enhance the visual appeal of your entire backyard.
Linear strip LED lights are an excellent choice in modern design that subtly illuminate steps without distracting from other visual appeals of the surrounding yard. If you are unsure of the type of stair lighting that is best for the exterior of your home, our residential outdoor lighting experts can help you choose the best approach to illuminating your backyard steps for safety, beauty, and ease. Once you have a well-lit staircase, you’ll imagine how you ever navigated your backyard without it.
Task Lighting
If you’re an avid griller, want to enjoy supper outside in pleasant weather, or even if you’re a voracious reader who loves to sit on the porch and take in a good book with an evening cup of tea or glass of wine, outdoor task lighting can make your hobbies extend well into the nighttime hours. Having lighting outdoors for the tasks and activities you enjoy can really make the difference when it comes to being able to maximize your enjoyment of your home and backyard.
If you cannot see outside in the darkness of your backyard, you are forced to remain indoors for the activities you’d rather do with the coolness of the night air on your face. The simple fix is to install task lighting in your backyard. Task lighting is designed to brighten up areas you use for the activities you love– whether it’s through a hanging chandelier or string lights over an outdoor dining table or overhead downlighting placed over a grilling area for optimizing sight in cooking spaces or another specific area of activity, your residential backyard lighting options can easily be adapted to promote use for the tasks you love after-hours.
Landscape Uplighting
While the previously mentioned ideas for enhancing your backyard with outdoor lighting focused on not only visual appeal but functionality, landscape lighting is truly one of the chic and modern ways to make an impact with your yard’s visual aesthetic simply for the beauty of highlighting the space.
When homeowners are blessed with beautiful yards that have areas that make a statement simply for existing, what better way to show off those backyard details than through landscape lighting. You’ve worked hard to build a backyard space you can be proud of– whether it’s to highlight a tree, fountain, lawn ornament, or other features, using landscape uplighting allows you to create a lovely focal point in your space through the use of illumination.
Landscape uplights, also called spotlighting, use a standard voltage light that is installed at ground level. The light shines upward, casting a narrowly lit wave of light upward toward the tree, bush, flowerbed, or ornamental fixture you want to highlight.
Enhance Your Raleigh Backyard with Professional Installed Outdoor Lighting
Carolina Outdoor Lighting Professionals enjoy working with local homeowners to enhance backyard landscapes with unique ideas that allow for functionality as well as visual appeal.
A professional outdoor lighting installation will make you want to spend as much time outdoors, well into the evening hours as the weather will allow. Never again will you and your guests need to retreat inside simply because of the dark when you utilize our services to design the backyard lighting landscape of your dreams.
To schedule a free, no-obligation evening demonstration and consultation in Raleigh, Cary, Apex, Morrisville, and the surrounding Triangle areas, please reach out to us today at 919-523-0561 or fill out our easy-to-use contact form.