Patio and Outdoor Living Lighting, Lighting the Space You Actually Sit In|How to Light a Patio? Start With How You Use It|Patio Lighting That Gets Used and Why It Is Not the Same as Curb Appeal

The back of the house is not curb appeal

Front yard lighting is seen from outside. The patio is for people sitting in it. That flips the priorities. Nobody cares how the patio reads from the road. What matters is whether the space still works after dark.The short version: do not treat the back as an afterthought of the front. A roofline system handles the street view and almost nothing for where you sit. Two spaces, two separate sets of requirements to satisfy.

Glare is the enemy

A single glaring bulb will empty a patio faster than no light at all. Look at a bright source and your eyes stop adapting to the dark. The fix is to put light low, high, or behind something: down at the deck, overhead well above the eye, or hidden behind furniture.

The overhead layer

Strung lights above a patio give the space an edge overhead. A patio without them has no top to it. With them it becomes an outdoor room. Keep them soft, always.None of this costs much more than doing it badly, because the https://emiliocrwx823.stonefielddigest.com/posts/event-and-party-lighting-lighting-built-for-one-night-planning-event-lighting-what-you-need-to-know-lighting-an-outdoor-event difference is mostly placement and color rather than the number of fixtures on the invoice.

Layers, roughly in order

A patio works best with a few layers rather than one solution. Something overhead for general warmth. Something low so nobody trips on the way to the door. And a little accent somewhere at the edge. Put them on separate controls if you can, 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 is the difference between seating outside and not. Nothing changes technically. The stakes are just higher.

Lighting stretches the season

An unlit patio has a usable season that ends when the days get short. With light, the space is available whenever the weather is. Mild evenings are not limited to July, and the dark is what keeps people indoors. The lighting is what converts them into usable time.

Something worth knowing about color

Outdoor light brings company on a warm evening. Warmer light is less interesting to most insects, which conveniently matches what looks good anyway. It will not make a patio bug free, and that is not a claim worth making. But it is worth factoring in.Worth adding: the same warm setting suits the roofline above the patio, so the two do not disagree with each other.

Getting your outdoor space planned

The plan comes from walking it, not from a template. EverCrest Lighting designs and installs patio and outdoor living lighting for homes, restaurants and businesses across Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina, out of Greenville. The consultation is free. Reach them at (864) 252-1732 or [email protected].

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