By Karen Maserjian Shan, for the Poughkeepsie Journal, July 30, 2004
Brian Cassidy photos

Lighting provides safety and stylish ambience.
When Debra Proctor had the patio around her new backyard swimming pool landscaped a year ago, she also had the area lit. At the same time, she and her husband John had Neave Landscaping in Wappingers Falls trim and light the front area of their two-story Colonial home.

"There was path lighting in front of the house, just so you could see getting up these stairs," Debra Proctor said of the Wappingers Falls home's outdoor treatment when the couple first moved in six years ago.

Now the front and back of the house are landscaped and lit, with the lighting beginning at the driveway and continuing along the front of the house, right around to the back yard and pool area.

"It doesn't look like a runway, like it originally would have looked like," she said. "There are lights under the trees, there are lights all around the pool."

Lanterns, lamps on posts and hidden fixtures set around trees and bushes illuminate the outdoors around the Proctors' home, lighting the way for people to see and creating an inviting mood.

"It's beautiful," Debra Proctor said. "It's not bright ... It's really just delightful."

Brian Sitler, irrigation and lighting manager for All County Sprinklers, a division of Neave Landscaping, said lighting not only enhances landscaping, but also provides night light for outdoor areas.

"It does give enough visibility to be able to see where you're going," Sitler said of landscape lighting.

Hi-tech improvements

Nowadays, the lights can be controlled with photocells and/or timers to automatically turn on and off when desired.

Lights equipped with photocells react to natural light and will kick on as the evening falls and then turn off when dawn arrives. Those programmed with a timer turn on and off at precise times, set by the homeowner. Many people opt for lighting fitted with a combination of photocells and timer controls, Sitler said, in which the photocell turns the lights on when it gets dark and a timer turns them off, say, around midnight.

"This time of year, the lights really don't come on until 8:30, 9 o'clock, when it gets dark," Sitler said of lights equipped with at least one photocell. "But later on in the year, as it starts getting dark earlier, like at 6 o'clock, the lights can actually pop on without having to make any adjustments to the clock."

In this way, he said, the lighting controls don't have to be continually adjusted to compensate for the naturally changing light conditions.

Landscape lighting is powered by transformers that are plugged into a standard 120-volt outlet. New transformer designs are more powerful than those used in the past, allowing for fewer of them to be needed to operate large sections of outdoor light, Sitler said.

People having new hardscaping installed, such as patios and walkways, should have underground PVC sleeves set in place during the installation process to give underground wiring a place to run through, should outdoor lighting be installed at a later date, Sitler said.

Plus, he said, when lighting an area, the type of fixtures used, amount of light they project and symmetry in design all affect the aesthetics of the area. Different fixtures can be used to project light outward, upward or downward to create different visual affects, with each contributing a different look to the landscaping and home's aesthetic appeal.

Integrating design

John Brady, president of The Brady Company Distinctive Landscaping in Pleasant Valley, said when selecting light fixtures for landscaping, consider the style of your house. For example, if your home is a Colonial style, select a lamppost designed with Colonial details, he said.

Brady also said when lighting garden areas, think about whether you want the fixtures to be hidden among the plantings so that only the light that shines from them can be seen, or if you want them set out as distinct elements that complement the overall scheme.

The amount of light used also matters, Brady said. Pathways, corners and stairways should be well-lit for safety purposes, but other areas can be more subdued, especially if you want a particular mood.

"There are points of objects that you need to light, no matter what, because of safety issues," he said. "Then there are other points -- how much light do you really want to have? In a pool setting you would want to use more of an intimate lighting. Sometimes less is more."

General and accent landscape lighting should work together, Brady said, for a subtle, yet effective outcome.

"Sometimes lights can be done and they're too bright," he said, adding over-bright bulbs can create visual hot spots in which one area or another stands far out from all the others. "It's just planning in what you want to do," he said.