A Lighting Design Formula To Turn Your Backyard Into A Dream Entertainment Space

Now, when the stars come out, you don't have to go inside. With the right lighting, you can expand the use of your yard exponentially. And don't just think tiki torches and patio lanterns - although those are great, too. These days, everything from spot to flood lights comes in different shapes, sizes and wattages to suit a variety of outdoor decorating styles.

And remember: Take the same approach to lighting your exterior as you would your interior, combining several types of lighting - ambient, accent, task and decorative - to set a mood, whether it's warm, intimate and romantic or spectacular and dramatic. Like on any good stage set done properly, lighting serves both functional and aesthetic purposes: increasing safety and bringing out the beauty of your landscape's details and architecture. Here, a primer on how to create enchanted spaces from summer into fall. 

Entertainment lighting
Illuminated plant pots and solar lights that look like patio lanterns, or that are encased within stepping stones, are creative and decorative ways to light your yard for outdoor entertaining. One can also attach lights to a patio umbrella or string fairy lights along the sides and top of your gazebo to simulate a starry night. Set trios of hurricane lamps of differing sizes on side tables to create a soft glow, or hang a dozen flickering votives in jars from your trees to make it look like the fireflies have come out to play. Whatever lights or lamps you choose, watch how they quickly transform the open space into an intimate backyard room once the sun sets.

Downlighting
Downlighting creates soft illumination from above. To create a dappled moonlight effect, position a wide flood spotlight high in a tree, angled down. It will brighten branches and leaves in its path and cast shadows on the ground. For a full-moon effect, place lights pointing up from the base of the tree and down from the top.

Uplighting
Uplighting acts the same way as focused accent lighting inside your home. By illuminating objects from below, you create dramatic focal points. Save it for garden sculptures, shrubs or trees that you want to highlight. The effect you achieve depends on the angle of the light: If you want to emphasize the texture of a tree trunk, install lights near the base of the tree. If you want to illuminate the leaves, install lights farther away. Place lights behind plants, trees or landscape art to cast shadows and emphasize their silhouettes, or illuminate a lighter-coloured wall or fence behind them.

Area lights and Path lighting
Similar to ambient light indoors, area light is general floodlighting that washes larger spaces in a soft glow. Use it on sections of lawn, hedges, patios or conversation corners. Then approach the lighting of your driveways, walkways and steps as task lighting, which provides both safety and beauty. Likewise, path lighting. Position a series of downlights on alternating sides of your walk or steps to ensure light spreads horizontally in muted pools. The best bets are safe and affordable low-voltage fixtures that are less than two feet high.

Planned wisely, lighting brings depth and dimension to your yard, creating romantic outdoor dining nooks, turning ordinary plants into art and adding drama to your home's exterior architecture. Much of its beauty, however, is its ability to stretch time: Because, as we know, a summer yard that's illuminated properly and beautifully encourages lingering long past one's usual bedtime.

Lighting tips

• The secret to lighting is to contrast. Play with the light and shadows. Illuminating your whole yard is overwhelming and dilutes the visual impact. Determine focal points, whether it's the patio table on the deck, a door, fountain or tree. Don't choose too many. A couple is enough.
• Be careful with colour. White light is best and makes plants look healthy. Yellow tones can make green plants look sick.
• Incandescent bulbs provide natural, warm light. You'll get whiter, brighter light from quartz-type bulbs, whereas tungsten halogens are lower voltage, last longer and use less electricity, but they get extremely hot.
• Low-voltage and energy-efficient lights like LEDs on a timer are great. Solar-powered lights are good, too, but may run out of power before the end of a long night, so don't use them in key spaces where lighting is essential.  www.desertlighting.com

Help in Choosing the Perfect Chandelier Size for your Room

Choose the right size for your room.  Measure the width of your room. The chandelier should be two inches in diameter for every foot of width. A 12-foot wide dining room, then, would work best with a chandelier that’s 24 inches in diameter; a 10-foot wide space would call for a chandelier approximately 18 to 24 inches in diameter. Other experts offer a similar formula: Add the dimensions of the room together, and that number in inches is the width of the chandelier that best fits the room. So a 10-by-12 foot room would call for a 22-inch wide chandelier.

Consider too, the chandelier’s style in selecting the right size. For example, if a chandelier is extremely ornate, even if it’s smaller than what you might imagine, it can work in a large room! The ornate features give it a different kind of weight.

For eating areas, consider the size and shape of your table in picking the right chandelier. The chandelier should be approximately one-third the width of the table. So a 5-foot round dining table would call for a chandelier with a diameter of 20 inches. Oval or rectangular tables can take a slightly wider chandelier, such as a pendant style with two or more pendants. A round chandelier, the most classic shape, is terrific with a round table.

Hang the chandelier so that the bottom of the chandelier is roughly 30 inches from the top of the table. That ensures that the chandelier doesn’t encroach on your view of your dining companions, and it gives you space to fit a vase of flowers or another tall centerpiece.  Most people hang chandeliers way too high. Also, be sure that the chandelier is centered over the table and not in the middle of the room. If you’ve got a hutch or sideboard against one wall, as most people do, your table will likely be pulled out slightly from the exact center of the room, and everything will look off-kilter if the chandelier hangs exactly dead center.

Think about how much light you need for your space. The chandelier is usually only one part of the lighting. In a dining room, pot lights in the ceiling or track lights can add extra wattage if you use the space for projects and homework as well as candlelit dinners. Perimeter lighting, such as sconces or buffet lamps, can add even more illumination. In most cases, it’s best to put your chandelier on a dimmer switch, so you can change the intensity of the lighting for various uses.

Don’t forget that a chandelier is not just for the dining room. Chandeliers are being used in every room in the house.  We love how they dress up a kitchen, bathroom or living room.

www.desertlighting.com