Outdoor Lighting

If you’d like the inside of your house to feel bigger, start outside...

There’s a trick to making the inside of your house feel bigger – especially at night. It’s outdoor lighting. Randall Whitehead, author of “Residential Lighting,” says with little or no exterior lighting, windows become black mirrors at night for people inside, making it feel a lot smaller. Some inexpensive strategic lighting outside can really open things up AND make you feel safer by deterring burglars. Randall suggests we think beyond the lights near our doors. Here are three good options:

• Uplighting creates a dramatic effect by illuminating trees or shrubs from a recessed fixture in the ground.

• Downlighting can shed a lot of light from fixtures mounted on the eaves.

• If you’d like to get fancy, moonlighting is the way to go. That’s achieved by mounting lights on a mature tree ABOVE the lowest branches – and creates a dappled, natural-looking light and shadow effect.

Pathway lighting is important – but it’s easy to do wrong. If you want to avoid the runway look, vary the distance between them and switch sides along the way. Also be sure to have a light at any spot where there is a step.