Lights bring the landscape out at night

BY ANNIE CALOVICH

The Wichita Eagle

When you drive by the College Hill house of Robert Moore and his wife, Cheryl McGuire, it looks warm and welcoming — even at night.

That’s because the landscape is lighted — up into the trees, along the walks, on the porch — with a golden glow.

“I think the big thing is it really complements good landscaping,” Moore said of landscape lighting. “It gives you a different feel at night as opposed to what you have during the day.”

Nightscaping can point up beautiful architecture and plants that otherwise are lost in the dark. They also add interest and warmth in the winter.

“They kind of give the smaller trees the height,” Moore says. He’s an optometrist who says that both indoor and outdoor lighting of a house are important to him. “The shadowing’s pretty cool. It’s nice to have some along the path to see where you’re going. The only time we turn it off is when we have our Christmas lights on.”

Landscape lighting is becoming more popular in Wichita, says Nathan Polson, landscape designer at Hong’s Landscape & Nursery. “People are kind of realizing that the landscape can be beautiful at night as well.”

Landscape lighting is not to be confused with security lighting, such as motion sensors and floodlights, Polson says. “It’s more of a subtle lighting. It’s more to bring out the features of the landscape.” But landscape lighting can increase safety, Polson said, such as lighting paths so that visitors don’t trip or fall.

“As humans, we seem to be intrigued or drawn toward light,” Polson says. “Look at how people view Las Vegas: It’s considered more beautiful at night than in the day. Light tends to draw us in. It can kind of draw you to an area where you normally wouldn’t go, where you can walk there safely, not tripping or falling, or, ‘I can see what’s over here now.’ ”

Path lighting has always been popular, Polson says. “Sometimes people do path lights to define the border of like the garden beds that go around the house. When you have stone, a nice edging, it helps showcase that. Even with plastic edging it helps highlight a border.”

Landscape lights also can shine up into trees, showcasing their branching, and they can shine down from trees as well, onto, say, a patio or a fountain.

“When you’re coming up with the lighting design, you want to highlight the stronger features, and there’s varying degrees,” Polson says. “Some people want a lot of light, or some want a couple of trees on the corners.”

And nightscaping is not just for plants. Builders these days are doing soffit lighting that shines down from under the eaves of a house. And some people want extra light splashing up onto the stone or brick of their house as well, Polson says.

“It’s not just about highlighting the landscape and plants. We also help accentuate some of the features or the architecture of the house itself.”

If people have never paid for professional lighting and only bought kits from big-box stores, they’ll probably find that they can only buy a couple of fixtures for what a kit costs, Polson says. But landscape professionals aren’t restricted by the configuration or number of lights in a kit. They decide with the homeowner what should be lighted, “and we put fixtures to light what we want,” Polson says. In addition, warranties on transformers and fixtures bought from landscaping or lighting professionals are long-term and sometimes lifelong, he says.

Moore and his wife inherited the lights with their house when they bought it five years ago, including the bulbs. Moore is amazed that some of the original bulbs are still burning even with almost nightly use. But the CFLs that are in lights under the eaves of the house are harsh, and he and his wife rarely switch those on, he says.

But improvements in the energy-efficient bulbs mean that new ones are almost as warm as incandescents, Polson says. Moore says he’s considered getting some of the new ones for the eave lighting. Polson encourages the use of LED bulbs, which can last eight to 10 years.

Moore sees lots of opportunity for more of Wichita to beautify at night.

“There’s a few homes in College Hill that have more traditional, kind of designed lighting as opposed to putting a few of the solar things out by your walkway or something,” Moore says. “It adds quite a bit to it.”

Reach Annie Calovich at 316-268-6596 or acalovich@wichitaeagle.com. Follow her on Twitter:@anniecalovich.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/living/home-garden/article20523150.html#storylink=cpy