How Lighting Can Add Luxury to Outdoor Living Areas

Luxury Outdoor Living Spaces

High-end outdoor light fixtures are about so much more than just being able to see when you're in your yard at night. The right light fixtures can be a crucial element of creating a luxury outdoor space, highlighting the architecture of your home, featuring the natural beauty around you, and ensuring the safety of your household. 

If you’re wondering how to spruce up your outdoor space, take a look at our recommendations for lighting luxury outdoor living spaces. We hope it inspires you to design an inviting and functional light scheme to maximize the beauty of your exterior areas.

1. Framing From The Inside Out

You always want to ensure a harmonious transition between your indoor lighting and your outdoor fixtures. To develop a natural, fluid connection, you can echo the design of your interior light fixtures outside to foster an environment that flows and that’s an extension of your home decor. Some of the more subtle ways you can integrate this connection to create unified luxury in outdoor living spaces include:

• Maintain consistent bulb color temperatures inside and out.
• Frame your outdoor views to light the landscape so you can see it from inside.
• Position fixtures to minimize glare and reflections on windows.
• Choose lights with similar finishes, light bulb styles, and colorways.
• Add dimmers to create cohesive light levels that eliminate abrupt brightness changes.

These are guidelines for how to spruce up your outdoor space that provide you with more versatility in design and functionality over time.

2. Prioritize Movement Throughout the Space

A key element of luxury outdoor living spaces is making it as easy as possible to move around to your ideal location. While transitioning from the inside to the outside is one way to ensure seamless design, it’s also important to create travel paths to the key areas around your exterior space. 

Consider how comfortable it is to walk up the driveway, find your front door, or move your dinner party from the patio to a pergola or gazebo. Will people be fumbling in the dark? 

A few ways to ensure that moving through your luxury outdoor space is comfortable and pleasant include:

• Illuminate entry areas and driveways with softer guiding lights.
• Add low-level lighting along pathways to subtly direct movement throughout the space.
• Utilize ambient lighting in static areas, like outdoor kitchens, for a relaxing atmosphere.
• Consider how fixtures will interact with the surrounding landscape and focal points.

Taking in the design of your space as a whole will allow you to create rest areas and guide people along pathways in an organic, intuitive way.

3. Taking Directional Lighting Into Account

A big challenge in creating luxury outdoor living spaces is managing the contrast between your light sources and the dark sky at night. You may struggle with glare obstructing your view and the surroundings, or even blind people. High-end outdoor light fixtures that project light down or fixtures situated below eye level are essential. Some of our favorite directional lighting tips include:

• Using metal slope shades to direct light, or acrylic shades and natural shades to soften the luminosity with the softer diffusion they provide.
• Calculate appropriate lumen levels for each exterior location.

We recommend starting with 2,000 to 4,000 lumens for small porches, 3,000 to 6,000 lumens for walkways, 5,000 to 10,000 lumens for ambient lighting across your backyard, and 10,000 to 15,000 lumens for areas around swimming pools.

4. Reducing Light Pollution

Unlike interior spaces, where you can have overhead lighting like flush mounted fixtures and pendant lights, your luxury outdoor living spaces don’t have as many opportunities for ceiling lights. You may be tempted to use wall-mounted floodlights to properly illuminate large swathes of your exterior. Unfortunately, these fixtures are incredibly strong and can increase light pollution and cause discomfort when sitting outside. 

Here are our recommendations to minimize these issues:

• Add timers or motion sensors to schedule lighting only when you need it.
• Avoid bright lights and add dimmers to better control light levels as needed. 

5. Highlighting Your Home

Luxury outdoor living spaces are designed to show off all the best features of your home, day or night. With the right lighting, you can highlight the architectural features that make your home truly special, creating a visually appealing glow that can enhance the building's aesthetic. We recommend indirect high-end outdoor light fixtures to accomplish this task. Some tips for lighting a luxury outdoor space to enhance the architectural features include:

• Add tree strap lights that illuminate foliage for a serene, natural ambiance.
• Combine uplights and downlights along arches, columns, and textured walls.
• Create shadow and depth with unique light fixture positioning.
• Incorporate LED strips or string lights along ledges for continuous light.

You should also explore the optimal light fixtures to ensure plant health since they’re an essential part of developing a luxury outdoor living space. You want lighting options that won’t disrupt a plant’s natural cycle or affect its growth. 

Planning Cohesive Lighting

We’ve mentioned the importance of cohesive lighting for luxury outdoor living spaces throughout this blog. Using each of the steps above to inform your design for a luxury outdoor space will result in lighting that’s seamless, balanced, and pleasant. Just remember to create even illumination throughout, layer task, accent, and ambient light for more dimension, use fixtures to highlight the landscape, and ensure functionality with well-lit pathways and entry areas.

Now that you know how to spruce up outdoor spaces with lighting, it’s time to explore our new outdoor lighting collection!. Check out what we have in store for the perfect string and pendant options!