What Counts As a Good Outdoor Lighting Design?

Lighting has accompanied people through thousands of years of long dark nights. Today, lighting has gradually entered the field of environmental art and has become an important factor in creating, embellishing and enriching the environment. So, for outdoor lighting design, what kind of outdoor lighting design is good?

Many people's first reaction is "bright is good, dark is bad", although this way of illuminating the entire space is quite common, but this only realizes basic lighting, and there is also "bad darkness" in the space. " and "comfortable darkness, if you can suppress excessive brightness and unpleasant vertigo, and create a dark space with both light and shadow with warm lighting, then "comfortable darkness" will make the night colorful.

1. The focus of outdoor lighting design

Outdoor lighting design is different from indoor lighting design. Indoor lighting is more used for basic lighting and decorative lighting, such as chandeliers, ceiling light strips, downlights and so on. Outdoor lighting design pays more attention to the integration with the environment, using lights to highlight the soft characteristics of trees, flowers and plants, and reshape the color, texture and shape of trees. Combined with the hard landscape, it appears more dazzling and prominent at night, producing a good visual effect, increasing the visual level to the environment and softening the surrounding buildings.

2. Examples of outdoor lighting design

For example, the clever use of spotlights mentioned in the lighting design manual to create a tidy outdoor landscape:

a. Mottled tree shadows

When designing outdoor lighting, designers are often troubled by the cluttered tree shadows. Sometimes the lighting is not concentrated, and there will be a confused feeling.

At this time, we only need to move the spotlight and place it between the tree and the wall, which can not only highlight the beautiful form of the tree, but also make the outer wall neat and beautiful.

b. Pay ttention to the direction of the shadow

In nature, light is from top to bottom. When shadows extend from bottom to top, contrary to daily life, it will make people feel terrified and uneasy. The task of lighting designers is to eliminate this disturbing shadow.

c. Different plant lighting methods are different

In outdoor lighting design, the type of lamp light source, light control angle, installation position and lighting direction are all key factors affecting the effect of lighting design; it is necessary to comprehensively consider the characteristics of leaves, the overall sense of plants and tree height to choose lighting design methods.

1. Open and flat trees, larger crowns, such as luan, willow, locust, paulownia and other large trees, the lamps are placed on the trunk to 1/3-1/2 of the edge of the crown, and illuminate upwards.

2. Small tree, with relatively low tree type and small crown. For small trees with dense branches and leaves, the lamps can be placed outside the canopy range, and the canopy can be illuminated obliquely from the low to the top; if the branches are sparse, the lamps should be placed under the canopy and illuminated upwards.

3. Open upright trees with small crowns, such as poplar, ginkgo, palm, etc., the lamps should be installed close to the trunk, the light should shine vertically upward, and narrow beam lamps should be used.

4. Tightly flat trees, evergreen trees, such as cedar, cypress, etc., the lamps are placed outside the range of the branch structure, close to the leaf area, and illuminate upward to highlight the texture.

5. Low shrubs and flowers can be illuminated with lawn lamps from top to bottom; the light is illuminated downward from the branches and leaves to form tree shadow patterns on the ground.