Lighting the Path to Better Experiences
Your business is open well into the evening for the convenience of your customers who are best served after bankers’ hours. You landscaped around your building to provide shade and beauty and pay top dollar for the annuals surrounding your signage and sidewalks. But will your customers notice after sunset? Helping your customers find their way inside while enjoying the scenery is easier and more affordable than you might think. Here are a few reasons to consider pathway and other forms of outdoor lighting:
1. Safety and Security Feel Good: Walking into a business at night can be daunting for someone arriving alone at dusk or nightfall. The possibility for falls is elevated. Pathway lighting is critical to guide customers safely to entryways. An inexpensive way to boost curb appeal, pathway lights should be spaced to provide a minimum of 300 lumens per square foot and spaced thoughtfully to avoid a runway look. Artfully applied, pathway lighting can be used to highlight flower beds and trees while directing traffic indoors. Low voltage (12V) fixtures work for commercial or residential application, depending on the quality of the fixture. Nuvo Lighting’s Pagoda Pathway Lights provide ample illumination and look amazing in the daylight with their old bronze finish. For steps, we love these Eyebrow Step and Deck lights from GreenScape. They cast just the right amount of light but are shielded to minimize light pollution.
2. Showing Off is Fun: Creating a feeling of grandeur around the outside of your business with lighting draws customers. But a little can go a long way. Our eyes perceive light differently at night, so less can be more attractive. Outdoor lighting issues differ from those of indoor light. For example, reflection is less an issue outdoors because most surfaces are dark and do not reflect light well. However, position and shielding are more important in outdoor landscape lighting to prevent glare. Too much light, or poorly installed lighting, can create unwanted light pollution that shines into indoor rooms, washes out the view of the stars, creates glare that temporarily blinds people, and wastes energy and money.
Follow these tips to avoid excess light pollution from your landscape lighting:
Aim lights carefully. Position lights at night and check their position frequently.
Shield bulbs. Use fixtures that have reflectors and shielding to concentrate light where you want it.
Minimize wattage. Higher wattage will create harsher light without improving aesthetics or increasing safety. Low-wattage bulbs are often enough to provide illumination.
Control the light. Separately zoned lights with timers, controls, dimmers, or motion sensors will turn on lights only when needed or enable them to be turned down as necessary.
3. Time for Your Cameo: Bullet lighting highlights architectural features or gives your favorite Japanese Maple its starring role in your landscaping. Providing shape, color, and form using this type of lighting is easy. Placing the spotlights at the base of what you’d like to show off—a tree, a statue, or a water feature. The closer the light is to the object, the more precise the area is highlighted.
Silhouette lighting is equally attractive, aiming the spotlight at a wall or fence behind what the feature. Multiple fixtures may be necessary, depending on the amount of lighted surface area needed to effectively silhouette the landscape feature. Some of the most striking execution of silhouetting uses dense subjects like planters, well-manicured evergreen shrubs, and arbored trees with dense foliage.
Shadowing a feature creates an ethereal feeling by washing a feature with a soft light and illuminating the background surface to cast magical shadows on a wall or façade. Low lighting angles up makes for a grander shadow. Playing with the distances and angles or incorporating plants that provide movement in the breeze can animate your landscape.
In Conclusion
You’re now equipped with the right reasons to outfit your business with pathway and landscape lighting, along with a few tips and tricks. Providing safety and just the right amount of drama will create a customer experience that keeps people coming back, not just driving by. For more information on the fixtures mentioned or other ideas for putting your property in the perfect light, give one of our lighting pros a call at 1-800-624-4488.
