Safety and Security at Home
Having landscape lighting around your home adds a level of safety and security that you might not have completely considered.
When we install lighting, design elements include lighting dark areas that present the biggest hazards and threats. DIY landscape lighting installations often tend to neglect the very areas that are most important, like the sides of the home.
The long, narrow areas between your house and your neighbor’s can be very dark at night. There may be windows on the side, but these may be bedrooms or guest rooms with little or no light emitting to the outside most of the time. So, the area stays dark.
That dark stretch can be very hazardous if you need to walk between the houses after dark, maybe to close or lock a fence gate that was left open earlier. The sides of many homes tend to have a slope too, and in some homes with smaller lots this slope may be dramatic. After a wet day, that slope can be wet and dangerous. Someone may fall and be injured.
It’s also a very attractive area for anyone who might want to get through that gate who shouldn’t be there, or who might, for whatever weird reason, want to peek in those windows. Even worse, someone might want to use those windows as access to your home (especially if you’re not there).
Yes, it all sounds terribly dramatic, but it does happen. The sides of the house can be very dark areas.
If you light up the front, you might also want to consider a security light for the dark side. When we add these, we use a wide-angle lamp that sweeps or “washes” the side of the house. We keep the light low and just bright enough to illuminate the space, but not so bright that it shines in your windows (or your neighbors windows!).
This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Choosing the right fixture, lamp wattage, and beam spread is critical. Correct placement and focusing of the lights are also important. We have experience with this, and most DIY homeowners don’t.
Check out the safety and security pages of our site to learn more about these aspects of landscape lighting. And be careful.