Date: 20 Dec 2010 Comments: 0

So you’ve go big plans for your outdoor space right now, and a big part of it depends on being able to light everything up like downtown Tokyo. How the heck are you going to do that? Let me give you a quick rundown on some basic outdoor tree lighting techniques and ideas.

Choose the best trees

to begin, you need to analyze the shapes and sizes of the trees on your property, and decide which ones will have the best outdoor lighting effect. It’s an aesthetic choice. You have to live with your results, so find the trees with great structure, the ones that will cast awesome silhouettes, the ones that are least obstructed from view by buildings, other trees, or the general landscape.

Choose your outdoor tree lighting fixtures

You can choose recessed fixtures or stake-mounted fixtures. These are the most common. And don’t forget to choose your colors too. Greens and blues look spectacular.

Recessed lighting does not have much flexibility and once you set your beam angles you won’t be able to fiddle much with them. Yet they are very stable and difficult to disturb their placement accidentally.

Stake lights, on the other hand, are great because you can re-adjust your angles whenever you want. Yet they stick up out of the ground and can get dislodged by playing children, careless landscapers or an enthusiastic pet.

Choose your positioning

This might sound silly at first, but be aware that there are many ways to light up a tree. You’re not just sticking the best twig lights you can find all over the branches of your trees. You are setting large fixtures, and you should consider whether you’d like to light up your trees from underneath or from the side, somewhere outside the canopies of the trees. Or maybe a little of both.

Trees that have a sparse canopy look great when lit from underneath. The light will have a chance to baste the entire length of the tree-trunk. They also do well with back-light, where the silhouette is put to good advantage.

On the other hand, dense canopies do very well with side-lighting. Side-lit trees and front-lit trees with denser canopies reflect a nice amount of light.

There is a great deal to this process of transforming your yard space into Little Downtown Tokyo, so take your time, review these tips and then make your best artistic decisions with a clear idea of what you want to see.