Creative Landscape Lighting Ideas for Your Home in Alpharetta

Alpharetta has a long-standing, well-deserved reputation as a vibrant Southern city offering a high quality of life for its residents. Part of its charm lies in the strong sense of community and welcoming locals who are quick to invite you into their homes, and the temperate climate that offers perfect weather for entertaining almost all year round.

Neighbors and friends frequently visit one another for barbeques, and this suburban area has a collection of the most beautiful gardens. If you’re living in Alpharetta and looking for some inspiration for your outside area - creative landscape lighting will breathe new life into your garden, patio, pool area or deck. Four trends on the horizon include LED string lights, fiber optic lights, colored lights and unconventional uses of spotlights and floodlights.

LED String Lights

LED string lights can be wound around trees in your yard to make a feature of them, or around a garden gazebo or trellises. It may take a bit of experimentation to find a look that works for your garden. LED lighting is an excellent option as it is energy saving and the strings add a modern feel to your landscape lighting installation. They also work well to frame an area such as outlining a window frame, doorway or patio.

Fiber Optic Lights

These are also a relatively recent addition to landscape lighting design, being incorporated into artistic outdoor installations that come in many styles and patterns such as birds and butterflies. Fiber optic lighting is set to become very popular as the demand for it increases, and there will soon be more exciting options that can be included in your landscape lighting installation.

Adding Color to Outdoor Lighting

Standardized harsh white lighting is a thing of the past. Creative landscape lighting installations make use of different colors to add texture and interest to a patio, pool area or garden. There are a number of ways to customize lights with color including fitting existing lights with light filters or color gels and newer lights such as LED landscape lights can be bought in different colors. It is also possible to make your own light colors using acetate filters.

Colored outdoor lighting does require some experimentation as not all colors look good and using too many different colors can look amateur.

Unconventional Uses of Conventional Lights

Spotlights:

Spotlights are usually installed higher up, pointing down. But another way to use them would be to place them at ground level, pointing up or sideways, and have them highlight a tree or feature in your garden, around the perimeter of your patio or crisscrossed at regular intervals along a garden pathway.

Floodlights

These can be installed at the base of a tree or in a flower bed shining from the ground up (and they can be installed with different colors).

These exciting trends will liven up your next barbeque in Alpharetta. The easiest way to make sure that you get the look you want (and impress your friends and neighbors) is to use the best landscape lighting company in Alpharetta GA to bring your creative outdoor lighting ideas to life!

 

Outdoor Lighting and Landscape Lighting Tips

Do you have a general idea of what you want your outdoor lighting to do but don’t know how to go about it? Why not check out the different types of outdoor lighting that you’re drawn to? In this article, we discuss outdoor lighting, including some landscape lighting tips straight from the professionals at landscape lighting companies in Alpharetta, Georgia!

With so many different landscape lights in the market, you should be able to find the one that suits your taste, style and budget. You can go for soft lighting for some areas, while for other areas, you might want it bright. Watt indicates electricity consumption, but some lightings emit more than others, even with the same watt. Consider that the wider the light throw distance or the more intensity you need, the more output you’ll need.

LEDs, Energy Savings, and Efficiency

Some types of lighting are more efficient compared to others. Low voltage lights, can save on electricity by focusing light beams, but it typically does not have the line voltage’s equivalent beam throw. The more up-to-date 65-watt and 120-watt incandescent bulbs produce a maximum of twenty-five percent more light. Newer compact fluorescent lights give the high level of savings in terms of energy and the softest lighting. Mercury vapor lights give high illumination as well as energy savings, but they have a cool color.

The best lights would have to be LED lights which have LED arrays built in. Outdoor LED lighting is one of the favorites for landscape lighting. They can last for years, removing the need for always changing the light. Since they also use little energy, you can put in more lights attached to the same transformer. You can even use a more affordable and smaller transformer.

Fluorescent

Fluorescents lights can be utilized for banisters, walls, and signs. These lights usually give off a soft light quality and are also a top saver for energy.

High Pressure Sodium/Mercury Vapor

This group of lighting offers intense light at an affordable energy cost. Their color creations limit use and they do not come on readily with a flick of the switch as  they need warm up time.

Incandescent A

The incandescent A is a general type usually used at home. They are affordable, but has less light compared to other incandescent lights.

Incandescent B

Incandescent B is a reflector, either concentrated or flood spotlight. This has twice the output of incandescent A lights.

Incandescent Tungsten-Halogen/Quartz

This kind of light gives off a bright light consistently. This is available as a projector or a reflector type and can fit in less obtrusive and smaller fixtures.

Now knowing the kind of lights you might need and want for your lighting, it is also wise to consider few tips for your outdoor lighting. Here is what Southern Landscape Lighting Systems suggests:

First, disguise the landscape lighting source as much as possible. That is, except whenever the fixture is decorative. Second, do not overdo it. Just a little light can go a long way in the evenings. Third, try to be creative by mixing a couple of light techniques. Fourth, put in an automatic device such as a timer that can turn the lights off and on. Lastly, consider your neighbors’ circumstances. Make sure the lights don’t shine on their windows.

If you want more pro tips and consulting on your outdoor lighting, contact us at Southern Landscape Lighting Systems. We are your landscape lighting contractor in Alpharetta, Georgia.