Homeowners in the Upstate have an advantage people in less temperate climates don’t: we get to enjoy the outdoors during three seasons (four if it’s a relatively mild winter). You’ll see people gathered in gardens and on patios during any month of the year—and when the sun goes down, exterior lighting starts brightening those spaces, magnifying a home’s beauty while keeping its occupants safe.
Looks Good, Feels Safe
Security and aesthetics are top of mind for many of Graham Kimak’s clients in the Greenville area.
“Not only does [exterior lighting] look good and highlight good landscapes [after] daylight hours, it provides security if you’re away or out of town,” says Kimak, founder of Graham Kimak Landscape Design, who has installed thousands of exterior lighting systems in the Upstate in his 33-year career. “And if you’re lighting walkways or driveways, people can direct themselves properly without ruining grass or plants or falling and getting injured.”
Interior designers have long championed the principle of light layering, using ambient, task, and accent lighting to enhance appeal and functionality inside the home. Taking the light-layering strategy outside can help create depth and dimension in outdoor spaces as well. For overall ambient illumination, consider stylish overhead fixtures or strategically placed post lights. Task lighting can illuminate specific functional areas—pathways, steps, outdoor kitchens. As a final grace note, accent lighting showcases architectural features, garden elements, and art pieces.
Brilliant, but Subtle
A skilled landscape designer will incorporate lighting in the plan from the start, notes Kimak, who holds a degree in landscape architecture from Clemson. In addition to showing the style and color of the fixtures, a plan should focus on the elements of the landscape and exterior that will benefit particularly well from illumination, as opposed to flooding the area with retina-scorching brilliance.
“We tend to do more subtle lighting, up-lighting what we need to light,” he says. “We’re making sure that the house is properly lit, looking at walkways and steps and the plant material that looks good illuminated. We’re not going to put a light on something just to put a light on it—it needs to be aesthetically pleasing.”
Better Tech, Better Control for Exterior Lighting
LED lighting is becoming the industry standard, providing the same brightness as traditional halogen bulbs while using about 90 percent less energy and lasting 15 times longer, according to energystar.gov. Solar-powered fixtures may be tempting for those who want an even smaller energy footprint, but homeowners should keep reliability in mind, too.
“Solar is wonderful if you have the right amount of sun,” Kimak says, “but if you’re not getting enough sun, you’re not getting lights at night. The lights with just a little solar panel on each fixture are not consistent if it’s been pretty dreary for the past few days.”
Smart lighting that can be controlled from cellphone apps or integrated into a residence’s Amazon Alexa or Google Home system are increasingly popular, allowing homeowners to schedule on and off times as well as customize brightness and color in specific spaces. These lights usually rely on Wi-Fi, so make sure your home’s signal is strong inside and out.
Kimak finds that many of his clients enjoy the peace of mind of knowing they can keep their homes illuminated after sundown with the tap of a phone screen, even if they’re thousands of miles away.
“They like that flexibility of being able to control their lighting from wherever they are,” he says. “It’s a nice security feature that lets people say, ‘OK, I feel better’ when they’re away.”
Exterior Lighting Terms
When you’re designing your exterior lighting scheme, you have plenty of options and tools at your disposal—and a few decisions to make. Just make sure all equipment is designed for outdoor use and rated for the specific conditions in which it will be used.
- Lumens: The measure of brightness emitted from a light source.
- Footcandle: The measure of lumens one foot away from a light source.
- Uniformity: A measure of how evenly light is distributed across a surface area. Keeping uniformity in mind can reduce the risk spotty lighting can create in spaces like walkways and driveways.
- Correlated Color Temperature: CCT is a measure of how light appears in color, measured in Kelvin (K) scale. Lower K values have a warmer feel, with more relaxing red or orange hues, while higher values appeal cooler, emitting more energizing white or blue tones.
- Ingress Protection: The IP rating is a measure of how well protected an appliance is against dust and water. Usually an IP65 rating is sufficient, but some settings may require IP66 or IP67.
Low-Voltage Lighting: Low-voltage exterior lighting systems use a transformer to reduce the household line voltage from 120 volts to 12–24 volts. This allows for installation in areas where it might be difficult to install standard-voltage wire and conduit.
