These ingenious outdoor lighting techniques from the experts will help you add another dimension to even the very smallest of gardens, creating the illusion of space and a warm and welcoming effect.
If you’ve arranged your garden into different zones, screened challenging boundaries, used a clever paint shade, borrowed views, added focal points and thought hard about paving and pots, there’s still one more element to consider. Lighting can have the most dramatic effect on how your garden is perceived. In addition to boosting safety and security, it’s another tool you can use to make a small garden feel bigger and more welcoming, helping you maximise available space.
WORK FROM THE INSIDE OUT
A good motivation for lighting a small garden is the positive effect it can have on the view of the garden from indoors. It can soften your home’s interior and contributes to a sense of the garden being a usable extension of the home. Jo Mann, founder and director of Light House Designs (light-housedesigns.com) explains: “Houses with small gardens often have large bifold doors opening onto the garden, and these are usually without a window dressing. At night, without the softness of a window dressing, the glass of these doors becomes a mirror, which makes for quite an unfriendly environment inside the kitchen or drawing room. But if you light the garden, you’ll draw the eye through the reflection and outside. The effect of this is that the inside space feels bigger, and the space outside becomes usable.” Sally Storey, creative director at John Cullen Lighting (johncullenlighting.com) concurs: “A small garden in an urban environment should be considered an extra room and entertainment space. It’s important to light something immediately outside the window – such as the terrace – as this will draw the eye outside and extend the view. To do this, control the light intensity outside so that it is greater than the light within the room. Once the focus of the eye is outside, the rest of the features can be enjoyed and become part of the space. Understanding the levels of internal and external light is essential. For best results, the interior should be slightly dimmed.”
CREATE AN ILLUSION OF DEPTH
Light makes an impact only when it touches a surface, so once you begin working outside, think about what you want to highlight in the garden. “If your garden is all lawn from start to finish, there might not be much to light, so you may need to look around the edge of the garden or even add elements to illuminate,” Jo suggests. Illuminating only one garden element can bring dramatic results, but it isn’t always effective, or indeed useful. And while it’s important to light the immediate environs of the house, “if you only light the front of the garden, you’ll foreshorten the space”, Jo cautions. Instead, imagine the garden as a stage, with lighting at the front, sides and rear, and look for elements to include in the arrangement, adding them, as Jo suggests, if they are not already there. Good candidates include steps and pots, a multistem tree, a statue, a seating area or pleached trees. Installing lights towards the rear of the garden will give the feeling of enlarging the space but it’s also a good way to create a sense of journey. “You could use a couple of wall lights to light a terrace, a path leading down the lawn, little spike lights in the flower beds to spread light through foliage or up a wall or terrace. At the back of the garden, light what’s there – a building, tree or office. Really, you want to ensure you have enough light in the garden to max out your space effectively,” says Jo. “Decorative wall lights are good for ambient lighting. But, if they’re the only source of light, they can be glaring as the eye is drawn to the light source itself. Reduce glare by dimming the wall light and using a selection of fixtures for infill light, such as spiked uplights for trees and maybe a small floodlight over low-level planting. When selecting spiked lights, it is important that the light source is concealed, usually within a cowl, or baffle, so the effect is maximised without the glare. Another useful tip is to place a spike light in pots or among grasses. This creates a decorative candlelight effect, and helps with the other uplights and floodlights to provide interest on terraces,” says Sally.
USE LIGHT TO CONCEAL
One challenging aspect of small garden design is that everything tends to be on view, with nowhere to hide anything unsightly. There is, however, a small arsenal of lighting tricks and tools to take care of this. “As with indoor lighting, the best outdoor effects are created by layering light,” Sally explains. “The exterior lighting toolbox is also similar to that for interiors, utilising decorative wall lights, uplights and downlights, linear lights and spotlights to highlight planting and features at different levels around the garden.” These can draw the eye away from less desirable elements, or turn concealments such as a screen into a nighttime feature. Creating interest elsewhere, using attractive star lighters in trees, or uplighters in planting for example, means less than beautiful items are overlooked. “You can get such small light fittings that it’s worth doing something in even the smallest garden. Try recessed lights to illuminate a wall or trellis or add lights to pots. Even if it’s just three pots, anything is better than nothing,” encourages Jo.
Good advice
In small gardens or internal courtyards, if there is a high wall nearby, such as the side of the house, then fit a narrow, highly baffled spotlight to focus onto the table. This will be effective for dining and useful for highlighting displays. It needs to be high – two storeys up at least – as you don’t want the light fitting to tilt more than 10-15° from the vertical to avoid glare.” SALLY STOREY Be careful of submerging lights in still areas of water because unless the backdrop is dark slate, the water will look murky. Instead, light the surrounding area so the water becomes a black, reflective surface for nearby plants. That way, you’ll be using lighting to turn the water into a mirror. Lighting water where it comes out from a feature can work well, too.” JO MANN
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Constantly exposed to the elements, outdoor lights endure a lot of wear and tear, and weak, leaky threads will ruin the best planned scheme as soon as it rains. The less a light is unscrewed from its fitting the better, so buy the best lights you can afford: Jo recommends LED bulbs, which last longer and need replacing infrequently. Keep in mind the physical implications of a light. Recessed lights will work well in lawns, but they will prove troublesome tucked among deciduous plants that shed foliage. Spike lights, meanwhile, are excellent for shining light through border foliage but they aren’t good in lawns. “Be mindful of glare in a small garden because your eye will be drawn to that spot and find it hard to adjust to other areas,” notes Jo. “Use non-glare fittings where you can – these include snoots, glare guards, and honeycomb lenses.” The ideal wattage for a small city garden is between one and four watts, but brightness varies from brand to brand, so there might be trial and error before you settle on the right strength. The kelvin scale is a measure of the colour temperature for light sources. Opt for lighting around the 2,700K to 3,000K mark for a good, warm, white light. If you have bright security lights, Sally recommends installing an override switch. This will come into its own in the evening, “so that it can be turned off to ensure the remaining garden lighting effects are not destroyed. It can be switched back off again when you go to bed.”