Outdoor Living Space Lighting, Lighting the Space You Actually Sit In|How to Light a Patio? Start With How You Use It|Outdoor Living Lighting Done Properly

Two sides, two purposes

The front of a property gets judged from the street. The patio is a place you occupy. Everything changes when you become the audience from within. Nobody cares how the patio reads from the road. What matters is whether people stay out there past nine.All of which is a long way of saying the back yard is its own project. The front and the back need different work, and assuming otherwise is how a patio ends up with one bright light on the wall. Two spaces, two briefs, and one design conversation that covers both.

Glare is the enemy

The fastest way to make a patio feel wrong is one light source pointed at eye level. Look at a bright source and your eyes stop adapting to the dark. Aim for light you notice the effect of but not the source of.

Bistro and string lighting

The reason overhead strings feel right is that they define a room. A patio without them has no top to it. With them it reads as a defined space. Warm and dim is what you want, because bright overhead strings turn a dinner into a parking lot.The good version rarely costs more than the bad version, because aim and color temperature are free decisions.

Building the plan

Think of it as three jobs, not one switch. Overhead, underfoot, and accent. Put them on different circuits, since you want a bright option and a quiet one.

Restaurants and businesses have the same problem with higher stakes

For a business with outdoor seating, this is not decoration, it is capacity. Warm overhead light is the difference between seating outside and not. Nothing changes technically. The stakes are just higher.

Lighting stretches the season

Without light, the back yard has a curfew. A lit one stays open well https://evercrestlighting.com/permanent-lighting/ past the point the sun stops cooperating. In the Upstate there are plenty of mild nights well outside summer, and most of them happen after dark. The lighting is the thing standing between a nice evening and an unused patio.

Something worth knowing about color

Outdoor light brings company in the summer. Insects are drawn more strongly to the cool end, which is a second argument for keeping patio light warm. It helps. It is not a solution. But it is a free consideration when choosing the setting.If a permanent system covers the rear elevation, keep it warm and dim when people are out there, so nothing competes.

Where to begin

Patio lighting gets designed by somebody standing on the patio, preferably at night. EverCrest Lighting designs and installs patio and outdoor living lighting for homes, restaurants and businesses in Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina, out of Greenville. The consultation is free. Call (864) 252-1732 or email [email protected].

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