A good Texas outdoor lighting design requires a knowledge of beam spreads
Many times I have talked with potential clients who have existing outdoor lighting that they have never really fallen in love with. Perhaps they have had ongoing performance problems or maintenance issues, but even more often it has to do with the Texas outdoor lighting design.
One common deficiency in design can lead to V shape light patterns on their home; or tree trunks that seem to be lit in the middle without grounding or canopy highlights. A poor lighting scheme will also allow big dark holes between areas of intense light. These sorts of lighting faux pas can be easily rectified by using different lamps with appropriate beam spreads, or a more appropriate fixture that produces the right light pattern. A professional lighting designer would have these “tools” in his knowledge base and understand the importance of an even, well distributed lighting plan.
The beam spread most used by lighting installers is the 35° beam. This is known as a flood beam, although I consider it to be too narrow for wall wash light; it does well in certain applications, particularly when lighting an object overhead. You can really see the definition of these beams, however, on the exterior walls of a home. When the façade of a home is lit with these lamps used in the typical “bullet” fixture, the result is the unattractive VVV across the front. (I was going to include a photo or two here of this type of lighting but didn’t want to use photos that I didn’t have permission for and I also didn’t want to look like I was calling out another lighting person. If you google “outdoor house lighting” and look under “images”, you will see a lot of examples) A simple solution to avoid this distracting pattern would be to widen that beam to a more diffused 60° beam. Better still is the use of a wide wash fixture which produces a beam of about 90° or more. This provides a soft, even layer of light against the home. With the façade subtly enhanced in this way, the narrower beams are put to good use at the entry of the home to draw the eye to the most important feature – the front door — and make it stand out from the rest of the design.
As for lighting trees, the beam spread can also play a major roll. Once again most installers tend to use the same beam for everything, and will use that 35° beam to light everything from a tall palm tree to a spreading live oak tree. A tall Sabol palm, or maybe a thin Italian cypress tree, requires a very narrow beam in most cases, which would probably be in the area of a tight 10° beam to graze the narrow trunk, and then still have enough punch at the end to accent the canopy. On the other hand, a magnificent old live oak tree will probably need several very wide 60° beam fixtures to accent the inner trunk and structure of the tree while also accenting the majestic canopy.
Wide wash fixtures or mini wash fixtures work well when highlighting things like shrubs or Sego palms (and I love them for lighting homes as well). These objects are usually short and wide and really need a beam that can spread quickly since the fixture will likely be placed within the flower bed. Using a bullet type fixture in these applications is just a bad idea since even the widest 60° beam with a linear spread lens is not going to spread fast enough to accent the low plant properly; this is how you end up with a big bright spot on a wide plant with darkness on either side.
Lamps and fixture manufacturers provide a helpful document called a photometric chart which tells the end user how wide the beam will be at what distance, and how bright that beam will be at a given distance. The chart is usually limited to somewhere between 15’ and 25’ distance but that is usually enough information to make a better decision on what product to use in a particular application.
Using the proper lamp or fixture for each task can make the difference between just ‘sticking in some lighting’ and designing a nice lighting system that will look beautiful at night. It does take more time to think about these things in advance during the design phase of our projects, but it is time well spent when we see the looks on the faces of our clients when the project is complete.
We would love to spend some time designing an amazing outdoor lighting system for your Austin or central Texas home. We cover all of Austin, Spicewood, Horseshoe Bay, Georgetown, Round Rock, Liberty Hill, Burnet, Kingsland and Marble Falls. Contact us here to set an appointment for your initial design consultation.
