Lighting for Patios and Outdoor Living: What Makes an Outdoor Room Work After Dark|How to Light a Patio? Here Is What Works|Outdoor Living Lighting Done Properly and Why It Is Not the Same as Curb Appeal

The back of the house has a different job

Front yard lighting is for people looking at the house. The patio is for people sitting in it. Everything changes when you become the audience from within. Nobody is grading the back yard from the street. What matters is whether people stay out there past nine.The short version: do not treat the back as an afterthought of the front. A roofline system handles the street view and very little for the space behind it. Two spaces, two separate sets of requirements to satisfy.

Glare ruins more patios than darkness does

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: step lights, under rail, up in the trees, or behind a planter.

String lights are not a shortcut, they are a real technique

Strung lights above a patio create a ceiling where there was not one. A patio without them is a slab under an open sky. Add a canopy of light and the space closes in. Warm and dim is what you want, since bright overhead light is the wrong mood entirely.None of this is a question of spending more, since most of what separates a good patio from a harsh one is where things point.

How the pieces stack

Think of it as three jobs, not one switch. Overhead, low, and accent. Put them on different circuits, since you want a bright option and a quiet one.

Commercial outdoor dining

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.

More nights outside

An unlit patio stops being usable in October. A lit one keeps working well past the point the sun stops cooperating. In the Upstate that is a real number of extra evenings, and almost all of them are dark by six. The lighting is what converts them into usable time.

Insects

Outdoor light attracts things in the summer. Warmer light https://pastelink.net/if6f8sxt is less interesting to most insects, which happens to be the same answer aesthetics gives. It helps. That is all. 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, and the patio and the house agree.

Getting your outdoor space planned

Patio lighting gets designed by somebody standing on the patio, ideally after dark. 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. Call (864) 252-1732 or email [email protected].

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