Monday, April 22, 2013

How to Light Up Your Garden Beautifully

By Luis I. Hinton


Walk around your yard at night when you plan your outdoor landscape lighting, envision how and when you want to use your spaces, and rely on the tips provided by this article. That's because human beings' eyes need less light outdoors than we do indoors in order to see shadow, light, and pattern. Thus, when it comes to lighting your water garden, a little goes a long way.

Your landscape and water garden design should balance the home and its associated hard-scapes. During the construction, contractors usually will start to make trade-offs to trim costs and manage the projects bottom line and mostly, the landscape and the lighting have suffered the most damage.

While it is an art to know how much light to place in a landscape or waterfall to highlight the desired focal points of the area, garden lighting can be both functional and aesthetic.

There are several things to be considered when you want to light a water feature or pond in your garden:

If your garden has a waterfall, light it from two directions with fixtures on each side of the fall. Use path lighting to provide depth and softness to the area. As long as you're sure that your water is clean and clear, back lighting of something behind the water surface usually will surprise you with an outstanding reflection in the water's surface while underwater lights will highlight the fish as they swim through the light at night.

The discovery of light emitting diode (LED) lighting is one of the most important discoveries for water lighting and other garden landscape lighting. These lighting fixtures are permanently sealed, and therefore, no water can enter the LED chamber.

Furthermore, LED bulbs and diodes have an excellent operational life time expectation of approximately 80,000 hours and you do not need to worry about the maintenance. Plus, unlike other lighting system, LED lights do not have hot operating temperature. LED's coolness helps maintain the growth of algae and other plants which serves as food for your fishes.

Use housing stuffs that are only made of brass, copper, stainless steel or some of the new composite materials when choosing a fixture to be installed near a pond. Do not use aluminium because it will deteriorate. Cast aluminium is naturally spongy and can leak water into the socket housing which may harm to your electrical circuit. The material to use is one vital thing to consider when housing your lighting fixture.

Any water feature (a pond, waterfall, pool, etc.) in your garden can be more beautiful if you add lights to bring out the beauty of your plants, fishes or decorative stones. There is something magical about seeing the movement of fish passing underwater lights. However, the number of your light fixtures will not determine its beauty. Instead, make it simple.




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