Area-Lighting

Use Area-Lighting if you are thinking about illuminating an outdoor entertainment area or patio.

Lights Supported on Columns

Area-Lighting is a form of general lighting or ambient luminescence for gardening, board games, children playing on the grass and the concept here is similar in approach to lighting a large room in your home.

The idea is to provide patio spaces with lighting sufficient to perform tasks and to circulate safely.

Your goal is to create a uniform level of lighting throughout your patio space, but you do not have to light every square foot or square meter with even illumination as you would in an office environment.

Be sure that both you and guests can navigate safely and that steps and caution areas are clearly visible. You can incorporate Solar-Deck-Lights into your scheme for this purpose.


Lighting for Safety and Security.

This same lighting scheme may serve as security lighting, or, if you would prefer, you may install a separate security lighting system incorporating a solar powered spotlight and motion sensor.

LED floodlights mounted in an over head position will be ideally suited to the job.

This technique is far more practical for this purpose than, say, the Down-Lighting technique which seeks to imitate a natural sunlight or moonlight effect.

If it is inconvenient or impossible to "ceiling-mount" your spot lights, then use any existing supports such as columns and beams as mounting surfaces.



Completing the Effect

Complete the effect by adding some focal and accent lighting to create a lighting scheme that is neither flat nor boring.

Example, create focal points by literally focusing more light, increasing light intensity or focusing an LED spotlight on an interesting object or design element on the patio.

Note: if you find the flood lighting to be too bright, one solution is to filter the light through plants. Plant leaves can help absorb and diffuse light sources to lessen glare. Avoid annoying your neighbours with glare as well.

Accent lighting could be created with flickering candles on a table, trees wrapped in strings of white LED lights.

So now, with just a few tools in your Area-Lighting arsenal and some imagination, you can begin to transform your patio space. The next step is to review your choices of colour and style.