Summer living in St Louis can mean everything from casual backyard barbecues to formal dinner parties under the stars. We know how to make the most of our outdoor spaces in the warm months. When the daytime temps and humidity get a little too high for comfort, those evening hours become even more important. The right residential outdoor lighting makes those outdoor spaces even better, by creating comfort and ambiance for relaxing summer evenings.
Start with Safety
Use residential outdoor lights to make sure that safety is not an issue during the summer. While the right lights installed at key points around your house can help increase your home’s security, we’re talking more about physical safety when people are moving around at night. Good outdoor lighting will highlight walkways, pathways, and stairs to help prevent injuries. Use up lighting to show handrails and path lights to delineate the edges of walkways or paths. Lights on deck stairs or patio edges prevent falls or stubbed toes.
Landscape lights can also make outdoor play fun and safe at night. If your kids want to enjoy the trampoline or playground in the cooler hours, after the sun is down, residential outdoor lights in the right places can bring visibility to those areas.
Perk Up the Pool
There’s no better place to spend a hot St. Louis summer than in the pool, or lounging beside it. Poolside dinners and evening pool parties have their own special magic. Use well-placed lights to make the whole pool area fun and attractive for everyone:
- Use lights to create a sense of border around an open pool area.
- Light up walkways to and from the house.
- Use lighting to create different lounging areas around the pool.
- Hang bistro lights over an outdoor dining set for a cafe-like feel.
- Use spotlights to light up landscaping or trees for more drama.
- Colored lights add a festive feel to outdoor gatherings.
Increase the Ambiance
Bistro lighting is a popular choice for outdoor spaces, and with the customization options, you can use it to create just the kind of ambiance you want. Want a high-energy dance party under the stars? Light it up, get the music going, and dance the night away! Or perhaps you’re aiming for a more intimate, quiet gathering: dim the bistro lights for the perfect feel, sit back, and relax.
Other lighting options can create ambiance for different outdoor spaces by making them feel like rooms rather than random places in your yard. The ‘spread’ of a light, or the area it covers, creates a natural boundary. By using strategically placed lights to cover different areas of your yard and outdoor spaces, you can create different ‘rooms’ that feel homey, comfortable, and interesting.
Expand Your Activities
Sometimes our customers have large areas of their yards that go unused at night, because they’re further from the house. Maybe it’s the edge of the yard, or down by a creek, or off under some trees: it’s just far enough from the house that it’s not a well-lit area. Fortunately, we can often add on to existing outdoor residential lighting systems and create new outdoor spaces. That hidden little area may be just perfect for a fire pit. Imagine those summer nights sitting around a fire, making s’mores, and feeling so relaxed. All it takes is a set of walkway lights to create a safe path from the house, and a few well-placed landscape lights around the area.
Add Some Drama
If you’ve worked hard to create beautiful landscaping, why not show it off? Residential outdoor lighting can do much more than highlight your home; it can also highlight that beautiful bed of hostas, that giant old oak, or those gorgeous annuals while they’re in full bloom. Spotlighting trees and landscaping can be a bit tricky, so you want to make sure you use the right type of lights and set them at the right angles. Otherwise, you’ll create shadows and dark spaces, rather than uplighting those beautiful features around your home.
We would love the opportunity to help you create welcoming, safe, interesting, and fun outdoor spaces for your best summertime ever. Get in touch and tell us what you’re looking for; we’ll come to your home and help you design a customized solution.