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One of the best times to spend in your garden is the golden hour - the fleeting, yet serene moment when day meets night and the light transforms and enhances the features in the space.

But that sensation doesn’t have to end when the sun sets. You can create the same energy and depth with a professional lighting design scheme.

When executed correctly, garden lighting design can produce some stunning results - especially in large gardens.

In this article, we explore 4 ways to successfully light large gardens.

How to light large gardens

When it comes to lighting a large garden, there are many ares to consider adding light, such as paths, steps, sculptures, and water. Here’s how you can light each area.

1. Create a welcoming entrance & light pathways

The entrance to a large house is often accompanied by an impressive set of gates, where lighting the posts either side is usually enough. Even if the lighting on either side is subtle, it will still be obvious that this is the entrance to the house. The same should apply to the entrance to your garden.

A large garden is likely to have a variety of smaller paths that lead to different areas, which all need to be treated individually depending on the size of the path and how open or enclosed they are.

Paths approaching the home, or paths going form one area of the garden to another, don’t have to be even lit throughout. One option is to use indirect lighting from planting in the greenery.

path lighting

2. Add drama with step lighting

Adding lighting to your steps is very important from a safety perspective, but they can also provide dramatic or soft light for your garden.

Step lighting solutions can vary depending on the style of your steps, and the location.

If there is a solid side to the steps, you can integrate a step light that washes light across the tread. Alternatively, if the steps are open at the side, then a directional light source focuses the light down onto the read, instead of across.

Additionally, you could also add light between planting, giving a gentle glow that can be added to the greenery either side of the steps.

step lighting

Want to learn more about lighting design?

Download our lighting design brochure

3. Highlight trees in your garden

In large gardens, trees can easily dominate the landscape and become the centrepiece, and they are definitely worth lighting. Different trees will require different lighting techniques.

For example, bigger trees such as oak or beech can be lit by offsetting a buried light from the trunk, to catch the spread of the branches and leaves. You may require two or three fixtures per tree to get the best effect, but it can produce some magical results.

Trees such as palm trees have narrow stem, will require a narrow beam of uplight.

Not all trees need to be lit, though. Instead, choose the best trees to highlight, and allow the rest to remain unlit to play with dark and light in the garden space.

4. Light water features at nighttime

Garden water features, at their simplest, require little intervention. During the day, they reflect their surroundings, and at night they reflect the lit surroundings.

However, you can take it one step further to truly highlight their beauty with lighting design.

Architectural water features provide an important focus in a landscape scheme, which can not only create impact with light, but with the peaceful sound of running water.

Understanding how light travels through water is especially important, as solutions can vary depending on the effect desired. Working with a professional lighting design team can help to create the most mesmerising effect when lighting water features.

water lighting

Landscape lighting with Hampshire Light

At Hampshire Light, we specialise in residential, architectural and landscape lighting design. With over 20 years’ experience creating functional and decorative lighting design schemes, we create bespoke lighting design plans to fit the requirements of your landscape.

If you are looking for an experience lighting design team to kickstart your project, contact us today.

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