Patio and Outdoor Living Lighting: Lighting the Space You Actually Sit In|How to Light a Patio: The Practical Version|Patio Lighting That Gets Used and Why It Is Not the Same as Curb Appeal

Why the patio plan is its own thing

The front of a property gets judged from the street. The patio is for people sitting in it. Everything changes once you are the one sitting under it. Nobody is grading the back yard from the street. The only test is whether anybody wants to sit there.All of which adds up to one point. A roofline system handles the street view and very little for the space behind it. Two spaces, two briefs, and one design conversation that covers both.

Glare is the enemy

The fastest way to make a patio feel wrong is a bright fixture in somebody's line of sight. Look at a bright source and everything beyond it goes black. Aim for light you notice the effect of but not the source of.

String lights overhead do more than they should be able to

The reason bistro and string lighting works so well outdoors is that they make a boundary. A patio without them has no top to it. Add a canopy of light and the area has walls it did not have. Warm and dim is the setting that works, because bright overhead landscape lighting installation strings turn a dinner into a parking lot.The good version is not the expensive version, it is the planned one, and the planning is the part that costs nothing.

Layers, roughly in order

A patio works best with a few layers rather than one solution. Something overhead for general warmth. Something low for the steps, the edges and the path in. And something aimed at whatever is worth seeing out there. Put them on different circuits, since you want a bright option and a quiet one.

Restaurants and businesses have the same problem with higher stakes

A restaurant patio is doing the same job for money. Warm overhead light turns an empty evening patio into occupied tables. Nothing changes technically. Only the reason does.

Lighting buys you months

An unlit patio stops being usable in October. A lit one keeps working well past the point the sun stops cooperating. Mild evenings are not limited to July, they just happen at night. The lighting is the thing standing between a nice evening and an unused patio.

Something worth knowing about color

Outdoor light brings company in the summer. Warmer light pulls in fewer of them, which happens to be the same answer aesthetics gives. It helps. It is not a solution. But it is a free consideration when choosing the setting.If a permanent system runs along the roof over the back of the house, keep it warm and dim when people are out there, so nothing competes.

Getting your patio looked at

The plan comes from walking it, not from a catalog. EverCrest Lighting does patio and outdoor living lighting for residential and commercial properties across Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina, out of Greenville. The consultation is free. Call (864) 252-1732 or email [email protected].

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