When your landscape needs a bit of refreshing, lighting can be the perfect way to add the character and mood you’ve been looking for. We’ll be covering 21 landscape lighting ideas to light up the night and create a gorgeous aesthetic effect.
Landscape lighting can be delicate and soft, or bright and visually striking. From uplighting and spotlights to pool and pathway lighting, we’ll discuss all the best ideas!
Table of Contents
1. Contemporary Sphere Lights
The modern trend consists of simple shapes, monotone colors and unbusy decor. These outdoor sphere lights are a perfect representation of the contemporary style and have become popular as yard decorations in recent years.
They can be placed practically anywhere; in the grass, near walkways, or in garden beds to give a soft white glow to otherwise shadowy spaces.
Check Price and Reviews on Amazon2. Subdued Home Downlighting
Downlighting is a wonderful way to highlight arches, windows, peaks and other aspects of the home. It’s a method used to create subdued light effects on properties to provide visibility without being too bright.
This can beautifully and tastefully illuminate your home by adding intriguing shadows, highlights, and other intricacies. You can also use downlighting in your gardens.
3. Patio Stair Lights
Adding lights to the base of your porch or deck stairs can effectively light the path without the use of gaudy spotlights. Waterproof outdoor rope lights are often used for this purpose and give off a warm white light that is sure to be inviting to your guests.
4. Decorative Path Lights
If your yard has dark pathways, simply adding a few decorative solar lights can effectively light the walkway while also casting esthetically appealing, subtle light patterns on the ground.
Solar pathway lights are great for adding to the appeal of landscapes at night by automatically activating once the sun goes down. You can choose from warmer colored path lights, or cooler lights depending on the effect you’re wanting to create.
Check Price and Reviews on Amazon5. Hanging Tree Lights
Magical and reminiscent of a fairy tale garden, hanging long, warm lights from trees is a gorgeous landscape lighting choice. Hanging lights from trees can light up your yard without taking up any unnecessary space.
This idea can also create stunning shadows and highlight the intricacies of the bark and leaves of the trees, adding a visually beautiful effect to your backyard.
6. String Lights on Fence
Fence lights are wonderful for blending in with a rustic home landscape. They bring an incredibly relaxed and homey feeling to an otherwise boring fence and can light up areas around the perimeter of properties that wouldn’t normally be visible.
Fence lights are a landscape lighting option that is truly fun and inviting!
7. Soft Landscape Pond Lighting
Ponds are serene and calming, and they can bring relaxation to landscapes. And if you’re lucky enough to have your own backyard pond, you’ll surely want to enjoy it day and night.
Adding warm mood lights to a pond can enhance its appearance and reflect off of the moving water, making for a wonderful visual effect. Like in the photo, the bottom of the pond would also be visible, revealing any fish or decorative aspects.
If you’d like ideas for how to light your pond, you can take a look at this informative article.
8. Garden Edging Lights
There are many ways to light up a garden bed at night but one of the simplest is by adding small solar lights near the edging. Garden edging separates yards from flowers and can be decorative (like the basket patterned yellow edging above).
Landscape lighting near edging will not only show off the lovely edging work but will also accentuate any flowers or lush vegetation you may have growing in the beds.
9. Lantern Landscape Lighting
Lanterns have been used for centuries to light various landscape aspects. These lights can add a traditional appeal to your landscape and would look great lining walkways, near gardens, or placed by doorways.
10. Pool Uplighting
For pool owners, adding lighting either inside the pool or along the outside can dramatically change your pool’s appearance when night arrives.
Like in the photo, uplighting can highlight the landscaping surrounding a pool by casting shadows and creating warm light spots on the ground, walls, and water.
11. In-Ground Lights
In-ground lights can line walkways for subtle lumination or uplight short shrubbery, considering how low they are. They’re easy to install and can take up considerably less room than above-ground lights while giving off the same amount of illumination.
Check Price and Reviews on Amazon12. Arbor Lights
Garden arbors are lovely landscape additions in and of themselves, but when they’re covered in sparkling warm lights, they can really increase the appeal of a yard.
An arbor adorned with lights can be used as a nighttime focal point to keep the yard from looking overly bright or cluttered with blinding spotlights.
Check Price and Reviews on Amazon13. Vintage Style Lamp
Vintage landscape decor has been making a comeback in recent years due to their elegant and intriguing designs and appearances – and this antique style lamp is a perfect representation of the old style.
With antique lamps, you can light your drive, walkways, and gardens with warm white light and pure sophistication.
14. Driveway End Lighting
It’s no secret that long driveways can be dark when night falls. This can pose a danger for drivers on the road, make your home unable to be seen at night, and perhaps encourage unwanted guests to sneak onto your property.
Adding a light or two at the end of either side of your driveway can give you the security and visual appeal your home deserves.
15. Tree Trunks Wrapped in Lights
If hanging lights from tree limbs (like we discussed earlier) is too much of a hassle, wrapping the trunks in lights can increase the light on your property and be aesthetically appealing.
16. Spotlight on Landscape Centerpieces
For yards with brilliant centerpieces like statues or fountains, placing a hidden spotlight pointing towards the object can highlight any intricate details and truly accentuate three-dimensional aspects.
For instance, the statue in the garden above is lit with warm white light to create a dramatic visual effect. The muscle tones in each of the characters are clearly exaggerated while other aspects of the piece create stunning shadows.
Check Price and Reviews on Amazon17. Dramatic Door Lighting
Dramatically lit doorways are a wonderful way to draw the eye to the home. This can be done by lighting the door from above, below, or diagonally to create shadows and highlighting the detail of the doorway and door, itself.
If you’d like more ideas of how you can effectively light your doorway, you can check out HGTV’s doorway lighting article.
18. Muted Garage Lighting
Garages are important aspects of our homes and a dark garage paired with a delicately illuminated home isn’t the most aesthetically appealing thing in the world, after all.
There’s no need to overdo the lights on the garage, though. A dim light on either side of the garage doors, like shown in the photo, is the perfect amount of illumination.
19. Low Lighting Between Plants
Shrubs and bushes are wonderful vegetation choices for front yards. But no matter your garden plant preferences, dark gardens are never appealing. Adding small, warm lights in between bushes or lined plant pots can give your yard the evening glow it needs.
20. Uplighting Trees
Previously, we’ve covered two unique ways to use light in or on your trees. The final and simplest way to use landscape lighting is by shining spotlights up the trees.
This will light up the underside of the tree and allow light to pass upwards through the leaves. Like the other tree lighting methods, this method will highlight the details of the leaves and accentuate the bark of the trees, creating a wonderful shadowed effect in the evenings.
21. Patio and Deck Lighting
For covered patios and decks, inserting lights into the awning or pergola (like in the photo) is a worthwhile addition. Not only will it increase the visual aspects and overall mood of your outdoor seating space, but it will also increase the practicality for when you want to spend the nights outdoors.
Final Thoughts
Lighting is an inexpensive and simple way to completely transform the appearance of a landscape. There are various places for lights and different lighting methods to achieve any desired visual effect.
We hope you enjoyed our article covering the best landscape lighting ideas and were able to conjure up some ideas of your own!
