Essential Outdoor Lighting Tips
Lights and their strategic positioning have the competence of completely transforming the exterior look of your house. Landscape lights can be both functional and installed to enhance and adorn the decoration of your house. On the one hand, they light up your entire property, thereby keeping you safe from the prowling of trespassers and delinquents, and, on the other hand, they can be the perfect accessory to brighten up the appearance of the house.
Despite the countless options of landscape lights in the market today, you must make sure that you settle down on an option that is congruent to your liking and the overall décor of your house. The choice of landscape lighting is also determined by the manner in which you want to capitalize on the available space in your grounds. Depending on this, you would have to conclude whether you would be in need of illumination along the pathways or driveways, or if you would prefer using landscape lights to highlight a centrepiece in your patio section. If you have a separate area for sports, you might have to choose a different set of lighting fixtures meant exclusively for this purpose.
Enumerated below are a few essential tips that would be of help in guiding you through the process of choosing a particular variety of landscape lighting fixture.

The Layout
Before you proceed with the purchase of landscape lights, make sure that you draw out a plan of what you would like to realize at the end of your project. The landscape lighting on your property is directly dependant on the efficaciousness of the layout that you make after careful inspection of the premises.
While charting a blueprint, be certain to be inclusive of how the exterior lighting looks from inside the house too. This would help you to ensure that the design is synchronized with the all-round look of the house.
Additionally, mark a few focal points on the layout that would be the locus of your exterior landscape. These areas would require special attention while settling down on the lights and it would be wise to choose lights that would highlight them and not overshadow them. Determining the focal point would also aid you in playing around with shadow effects to create more depth and dimension on the premises. Further, be conscious of the difference between ambient and spotlighting. The former is more mellow in tones and brightness and casts a veil of light over an extended area, while the latter refers to the use of strong lighting fixtures to focus attention on one particular part of the landscape.
Lighting Strategies
The three most popular choices of lighting strategies would comprise downlighting, uplighting, and cross lighting. Downlighting is the manipulation of lights in a manner that dissipates the light by pointing it downward. It aims at a softer, more affable glow dispersed over an area. Uplighting would be characteristic of dramatic and bolder lighting that creates strong accents highlighting the best features of the landscape and exploring the shadow effect on greater depth. The lights are pointed upwards, illuminating only a desired part of the property.
Crosslighting is the strategy of cancelling out shadows by using both the upward and downward focal lighting.
Other Factors
While choosing the light fixtures for your house, make sure that you are selecting more fixtures with comparatively lower lumen outputs. If you use a lesser number of fixtures, but higher light intensity, it ends up defeating the purpose of landscape lighting. This would create extremely illuminated centres in some areas and leave the great in the dark. This looks unsightly and is not conducive to the safety of your house as well.
If you have decided to install landscape lighting in your house, you could consider soliciting the services of Pro Green Irrigation Services to help you navigate through this plan to realize the lighting of your liking.


Automated sprinkler systems are an excellent option for any yard or garden. As they are automated you will not have to worry about giving your plants or grass too much water or too little. You will also save on water as you will not be using more than you need to keep your yard looking amazing. This will help with not only the appearance of your yard but also your monthly utility bill. You don’t need to be home for this to work either. Gone are the days that you would come from a vacation or business trip to find all of your plants wilted and deprived of water.
You will see a noticeable increase in the value of your home after you have a sprinkler system installed. This is achieved through having a more vibrant and healthy array of plants on display as well as the fact that the irrigation system is installed at all. Also, if you are looking to sell and have an automated sprinkler system installed, it can free up your time to work on other projects and fixes in your home that can add value as the yard will take care of itself for the most part.
No one enjoys weeding a garden. With some of the more targeted sprinkler irrigation system options you can have water delivered to the roots of the plants that you want to grow and be strong. The helps to stop the weed seeds from germinating. Also, by limiting the water that is sprayed onto the leaves you can reduce the chance of any blight or leaf diseases.
Over watering your yard can cause the soil to lose some of the nutrients that all plants need. With an automated or controlled distribution of water through a sprinkler irrigation system you do not need to worry about this as the amount of water that is distributed is carefully controlled and maintained.
The advantage of a modern sprinkler irrigation system installation is that you can determine not only how much water is distributed throughout your garden, but also where it is sprayed, sprinkled or dripped. This allows you to manage complex plant arrangements and provide each of your flower beds or vegetable patches with exactly the right amount of water they need at any given time.

Primarily used for watering at the base of plants and flowers, drip irrigation systems in Toronto are capable of delivering a measured amount of water in a very targeted fashion. As this type of irrigation system releases water slowly, homeowners in Aurora, Markham, Mississauga, Richmond Hill and Toronto have a great deal of control over how much water is used. You will also see drip irrigation systems in Toronto placed in the borders of flower beds, vegetable gardens and even greenhouses.
Another popular irrigation system choice is the spray or micro jet option. These are typically used to cover larger areas and provide a method of watering plants that is similar to rain. This is a highly effective way to keep your lawn irrigated along with keeping all of your plants healthy. As spray irrigation systems are so common in the Toronto area, you can find replacement parts and options to customize quite easily.
Perhaps one of the most simplistic irrigation options, the soaker hose system is essentially a hose that has holes along its length so that water can leak out at a controlled rate. This leaky pipe irrigation system is very easy to set up but has its limitations. It only has a limited range and is only really good for plants and flowers. If you have a large lawn area in your Aurora, Markham, Mississauga, Richmond Hill or Toronto home, then this type of irrigations system will not be suitable.
Very similar to a soaker hose irrigation system, this is a slightly more controlled method of releasing the water. Instead of simply having the water leak out of holes along the length of the hose, drip line hose irrigation systems have regular outlets for the water that help to maintain pressure throughout the hose. Unfortunately, this method of irrigating your Aurora, Markham, Mississauga, Richmond Hill or Toronto yard still has the same limitations and is not practical for larger yards.