A single spotlight, a simple string of festoon lights, or a full-scale professional design, garden lighting has the power to captivate people’s imagination and emotions and improve mental wellbeing. Garden lighting is mostly used throughout the winter months due to the long dark nights, but it is the warmer summer months when we venture outside and enjoy lighting as an immersive element.
A little lighting can go a long way, with downlighting providing the most natural results. While downlighting helps improve dark skies, this is not typically relevant with the low light levels used in professional garden lighting. Downlighting also seldomly works well on its own, so combining uplighting with downlighting when illuminating specimen shrubs and trees will produce the best results within a scene.
Controls are an important component of a garden lighting system, from simple on-off switches and timeclocks to full automation, and it is these controls which allow us to respect the surrounding landscape and wildlife.
A good example of a basic system for residential gardens would be to set the lighting to activate at dusk and switch off at 10pm or 11pm. Or, ideally, the lighting should be switched on only when required or set at an overall dimmed setting until the lighting is required at full output.
Suitable glare control is a must for not only assisting the designer with hiding the fixtures’ location, but when used with internal filters and baffles will also help reduce unwanted light pollution, and possible sky glow. Cooler colour temperatures should also be avoided as insects are attracted to the blue light produced by LEDs, with 3,000K being the coolest for dark skies. This colour temperature also looks the most natural for the majority of foliage and plant material.
Luminaires with a low output of typically between 1-6W are more than adequate for most garden lighting projects, with modular and interchangeable designed components being the best choice for luminaire selection and are more sustainable as the components can be replaced or upgraded in the field.
Neil Parslow Design
+44 (0)20 8265 3735
www.neilparslowdesign.com