Landscape lighting glare control needs to be a priority when designing an outdoor lighting system in Austin or anywhere.
See the effect, not the source (Bill Locklin, the father of landscape lighting)
I just read a brief article and realized that I really needed to write something about landscape lighting GLARE again. Glare is one of the biggest problems to overcome as an outdoor lighting designer. A light fixture shining in someone’s eye can ruin an entire area of lighting. so, how do you accent or highlight something without showing the source of the light?
The first thing that we have to do is use a light fixture with a movable glare shield. This will usually allow us to eliminate the landscape lighting glare from one direction but what about the other viewing locations? Some fixtures can also allow for a 360 degree glare shield but keeping debris out of them is rather troublesome. I also have used fixtures with no glare shield at all so…It may not be possible to block the glare from every direction but there are a few tricks to help.
One of my favorite things to do is make sure that there is a plant that can block the fixture. This works very well when there are only one or two viewing angles. Another thing I do is use a large rock or other object to block the view to the fixture.
We always have to make sure that whatever we do to hide the fixture, we need to make it look natural. I’ve actually added a form of yard art to hide a fixture that was washing a wall and guess what happened. It created a wonderful silhouetted effect!! I just love it when things come together and make me look good.
Glare from down lighting can be a huge issue. I see it all the time when an installer places a down lighting fixture only about 8′ up in a tree and they aim the light out into an area where people gather. Wow, that will really get your attention! These down lighting fixtures need to be placed well above the view of people and we generally use 20′ as a minimum mounting height. Also the fixture should not be aimed above 45 degrees which will allow the glare shield to do its work of blocking the view to the light source.
A good lighting designer knows how light fills a space and how to go about eliminating glare. If your outdoor lighting is shining in your eyes, let us have a look to see how we can make some needed adjustments. Just contact us here.
