You spend all that time creating a masterpiece garden that the neighbors will envy. Ooops. You just realize you forgot to install the landscape lighting. The best time to plan a good landscape lighting design is when you are planning your garden layout.

Landscape lighting design can be a simple lighting layout or a work of art blending nature with artificial light, incorporating color, shape and texture. You choose. What looks ordinary and dull during the day can be transformed into rich color during the darker hours of night. The nature of landscape lighting demands versatility. With a wide variety of different surfaces and objects to be illuminated the type of light and its placement needs to be considered very carefully.

Gather Your Ideas
Go over your garden design and decide on the objects, plants or trees you want to highlight with. If you have one prominent feature in one part of the garden such as a large tree or a sculpture then you can concentrate your lighting on that object and have low level ground lighting surrounding it in the rest of the garden. On the other hand you may decide just to scatter general low level ground lighting in amongst plants of the same height which will create a flat effect but will give you a rainbow of color.

Floodlight or Spotlight
To help you with your landscape lighting design there are typically two lamp and reflector types. The wide angle lenses are used to flood a surface with a wash of light where a narrow angled lens is used for laser-like accuracy to put a spot of light on an object.
Flood lighting works best by positioning it under leafy shrubs and trees. By doing this the floodlight will create shadows within the foliage and spill out onto surrounding plants. If you are trying to light a very large tree you may consider several floodlights to get an even spread of light.
Spotlights work best if they are correctly positioned and aimed at the feature you are trying to highlight. A good way to get this right is to temporarily connect the spotlight and move it backwards and forwards until the right amount of light is highlighting the feature.

Color
Color is an important consideration for any landscape lighting design. The most common source of light is white light. When white light is used it generally brings out the true color of the surrounding plants and objects because it contains all the visible colors. By using colored filters or sleeves attached to the light fitting, colored light can be used to emphasize the natural color of the surrounding plant foliage. Colors such as yellow are useful to use as it is a warm color and brings out the best in the wood of trunks and branches. Reds and Blues are also very popular colors to use.

Textures with Water.
Nothing in nature is smooth or symmetrical. With this fact in mind, light that is aimed at an angle onto rough textured surfaces can play an important part to your landscape lighting design. With the added element of moving water such as a fountain or waterfall, flickering shadows and reflections can be created. These are very soothing to the viewer.

Glare. To See and not be seen.
When locating the in ground light fittings in your garden try and hide them away from view by using rocks or other features. There is nothing worse than ruining a perfectly good landscape lighting design by having all of your light fittings visible. Normally the light source or lamp of the fitting is not guarded and will create glare. Avoid this at all cost.

By: Bob B Taylor

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Bob Taylor is a successful webmaster and publisher of www.lightingway.com If you would like to learn more about the subject of landscape lighting design please visit www.lightingway.com/

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Many people dream of a perfect landscape for their properties. However, few have the ability to put their ideas on paper. One of the best ways to get your landscaping ideas into action is to invest in landscape design software that can help you put your vision to work. There has never been a better time to use this kind of computer design software program than now.

Technological advances in the landscape design software available today make it possible for you to import photograph of your home's exterior and surrounding area. This gives you a realistic look at how the different elements that you add using the program. Instead of getting a general idea of how the design will look, you get a very specific image of your own property.

Don't forget the details, too. I started a project in my yard that wound up leaving me in tears. I didn't use a landscape design software program to help me make some very important decision. One of the decisions included choosing plants that grow well in my region. I chose the wrong plants and found that they didn't last very long.

Good landscape design software will provide helpful information about which plants to choose for your region. This can save you a lot of money in the long run, as I can attest. Plants can be pretty costly, especially when they need to be replaced within a month or so.

You'll also save money by using a landscape design software program because there is no trial-and-error that goes any further than your computer. It used to be that a misplaced bush would either have to be removed and replanted or it would have to just rest in its awkward spot. You don't have to do any physical work in order to get an image of what your landscaping project will look like.

One of my favorite tools offered in some of these programs allows you to see your landscaping project in the future. You can look ahead to see how the trees and plants will grow. Consider looking at your yard's growth over a five or ten year period. This is a wonderful option that is quite fun to use in landscape design software.

If you're really serious about starting a landscaping project, you can save yourself a lot of time and money by planning well in advance. Landscape design software is the best tool to use for putting your ideas into action.

By: Gardening Man

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Why not visit Backyard Ideas for more landscaping tips and information from Gardening Man, or Landscaping Care for further articles.

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