Unique Landscape Lighting
Ideas for Desert Homes

Adding light to your landscape enhances safety and security in the area and if done well can make the night-time garden as beautiful as the day-time version. And there's more to work with than the porch light and a few inset lights near the path: with a bit of planning, lighting can be designed to create striking effects throughout the garden. DL's pool landscaping section also offers information on pool landscape lights.

Types of Landscape Lights

Low voltage landscape lights
Low voltage systems use low-watt bulbs to save energy while still supplying adequate light. These systems are safe -- there are no bare terminals and the above-ground cables can safely be touched. They're also simple to install, with no wiring work, trenches, or encasing for the cable required. The transformer is simply plugged into a power source, the main cable into the ground and lights hooked-up using connectors. If you want to redesign the system, the cable can easily be moved again.

Solar landscape lights
Solar landscape lighting (solar-powered lights) are the perfect use for the desert's sunshine. These lights collect the sun's power in solar cells that charge nickel cadmium batteries. After nightfall, these batteries power light emitting diodes. Solar landscape lighting is very simple to install and works well in hard-to-reach areas of the garden where running a cable would be difficult. While they provide good fill light to walk in and see the garden by, they aren't bright enough to create lighting effects like highlighting statues or to light an entertaining or outdoor cooking area.

Landscape lighting ideas: lighting fixture types

• Mushroom lights: These, not surprisingly, look something like mushrooms -- small fixtures with wide shades, set in the ground. Typically used to light flower beds and ground cover, they come in a range of styles from plain metal "industrial" types to diminutive, creatively designed copper fixtures.
• Tier lights: much like mushroom lights, but with layers of "mushroom caps" to reduce glare. Often used near paths and stairways.
• Well lights: fixtures set into the ground to cast light upward. Used for walkways and to cast a layer of light on a tree or textured wall.
• Flood lights: fixtures that cast strong light in one direction. Used to light parking and entrance areas as well as dissuade buglers.
• Globe lights: fixtures covered in a glass bulb to cast light in a full circle. These work well by hot tubs and seating areas.

Lighting effects and ideas

• Accent Lighting: "spotlighting" a small to mid-sized item in the garden such as a flower bed.
  
• Down-lighting and up-lighting: down-lighting casts light over a general area, such as a pool or other entertaining area. Up-lighting throws light upwards onto an interesting element such as a unusually shaped tree or a statue.
• Contour lighting: placing mushroom or tier lights around the outer contours (borders) and inner contours (paths, large planting beds).
• Grazing: casting a layer of light to bring out the texture of a wall or tree bark.
• Cross lighting: museum-style effect with light focused on an object from several directions to show all three dimensions of that object.
• Mirroring: a beautiful effect for swimming or reflecting pools in which a particular garden element in lit to be reflected in the water.
• Silhouetting: placing lights behind an element to highlight its shape alone.
• Shadowing: the "shadow puppet effect" of lighting an element from the front so that it's shadow is seen on a wall, bamboo screen, or other blank surface.
• Moonlighting: Nothing to do with work. This is much more attractive -- a method of lighting an object from above to simulate moonlight. Can work very well if the light is placed high in a tree where the light will filter through the leaves