Security Lighting vs Landscape Lighting: Can You Have Both?
If you’ve been awake nights trying to decide if you should get security lighting or landscape lighting, you’ve lost sleep for no reason. Sorry about those dark circles.
Can security lights and landscape lights work together? Yes!
Here’s the thing: good landscape lighting IS security lighting. You don’t need to choose.
Let’s learn more about residential outdoor lighting in Sarasota, including:
-
First, Give That Motion-Activated Security Lighting the Boot
-
Control Your Sarasota Residential Outdoor Lighting from Your Smartphone
-
Frequently Asked Questions About Outdoor Security Lighting for Homes
First, Give That Motion-Activated Security Lighting the Boot
People often think of clunky motion-activated lights when they think of outdoor security lighting for homes. These lights suddenly flood
the area with glaring light when somebody, or something, gets close enough to make them turn on.
They’re a bad idea, for a whole bunch of reasons:
- They often turn on when there’s no real reason, triggered by pets, wind, a passing car. You can get so used to these annoying false alarms that you don’t pay attention if there’s a real threat.
- The lights’ sensors have limited ranges and angles, so they have potential blind spots.
- The sudden bright light can be glaring and annoying, to both you and your neighbors. Plus, they ruin the effect of any attractive outdoor lighting you have, washing out the landscape.
How Skilled Landscape Lighting Also Offers Security
If your landscape lighting is designed well, you don’t need separate security lighting. Good Sarasota landscape lighting design IS security lighting, while also making your home and property look great.
Here’s how:
1. Landscape Lighting for Safety Eliminates Hiding Spots
Dark areas around your home give intruders places to hide, like behind bushes or fences, or near dark entryways.
Landscape lighting illuminates shadowy areas, making it harder for anyone to lurk unnoticed.
That uplighting highlighting your palms out front; your entryway lighting; the wall wash lighting along your fence all prevent dark areas, offering security.
All these landscape lighting ideas deter people from looking in your windows or lurking in the bushes. And it makes it easy for neighbors to spot any would-be prowlers. (More on getting your neighbors involved in a bit.)
2. Lighting Deters Intruders
Intruders are usually looking for easy, low-risk targets, so any lighting can discourage them from your home and send them to a darker, easier target.
Well-placed Sarasota landscape lighting design is an automatic deterrent to criminals, because it shows you’re attentive and proactive, and your house is too risky to target.
Even when you’re not home, landscape lighting makes it look like you are.
3. Landscape Lighting Boosts Your Security Cameras
If you have security cameras at your house, landscape lighting is its important partner.
Cameras perform much better with adequate illumination, capturing clearer footage and making it easier to identify faces, vehicles, or suspicious behavior.
4. Entry Lighting Illuminates Your Most Vulnerable Spots
Strategically lighting your entry and garage doors makes sure your home’s most vulnerable areas are always visible. Potential intruders won’t want to risk it.
Entryway lighting that spills enough light to illuminate your door, porch and steps offers a protective layer of security.
5. Landscape Lighting Helps Prevent Trips and Falls
Even the most graceful people with perfect balance can trip over an uneven paver, an exposed tree root or your kid’s skateboard he promised he’d put away.
That landscape lighting along your walkways, driveway, paths, steps, and stairs keeps you and any guests on your property safe.
Path lights aim the light down and to the side of the fixture so you don’t trip and fall.
Simple driveway lighting pulls triple duty. It defines your driveway’s borders, marks the end so people can easily see where to enter, and guides foot traffic from your driveway to your front or side door. All of that offers safety and security.
Pro tip: If trees line your driveway, use uplighting to highlight them for a win-win. It makes the trees look great at night and helps illuminate your driveway, adding an extra boost to your security.
6. Landscape Lighting for Safety: How About Moonlight?
You can’t always count on the real moon to illuminate your yard at night. So fake it, with moonlight you create.
Outdoor lighting fixtures installed high above in your trees spill light down on your yard, patio, paths or driveway, creating a wash of illumination that highlights any hidden spots.
This lovely landscape lighting idea is actually a great solution for a less than lovely area of your property — your trash cans.
Here in Sarasota, trash cans get smelly if you store them in your hot, stuffy garage, so most homeowners keep them outside.
But if they’re in a dark corner, you could trip on your way out there with your six pizza boxes (we’re not judging) or stub your toe on the can.
Moonlighting to the rescue. We can also add path lights to illuminate that dark trek from kitchen to trash cans. We can even hide the unsightly cans with a pretty hibiscus tree or row of pitch apples and use uplights in the trees. Your trash has never looked better, and you stay safer.
7. Control Your Sarasota Residential Outdoor Lighting from Your Smartphone
Today’s controllers make landscape lighting for security easier than ever — you can control everything from your smartphone.
Turn on soft lights along your front walkway and driveway to make it safe and inviting for guests arriving after sunset.
Or activate your garage and driveway lighting for a safe welcome home when you’re arriving home late.
8. Get Your Neighbors on Board
When multiple homes in a neighborhood have landscape lighting, the whole community is safer, and less appealing to criminals.
Landscape lighting for safety helps neighbors look out for each other, too. When everybody’s house is well lit and welcoming, it’s easier to spot suspicious activity going on next door or across the street.
Frequently Asked Questions About Outdoor Security Lighting for Homes
Q: How can I prevent outdoor lighting from annoying neighbors?
A: Aim lights downward, use timers to turn them off by midnight, and choose fixtures that prevent glare and light trespass. Shields designed to keep light focused down, not out, help, too.
Q: Should I use solar security lights?
A: Don’t bother. Solar lights aren’t bright enough for effective, consistent security, especially in shady areas or during cloudy weather.
Q: Should I use motion-sensor lights for security?
A: If you have professional landscape lighting, you shouldn’t need them. They often turn on unnecessarily, triggered by pets or wind. And they’re annoyingly bright. Regular landscape lighting typically offers enough light to keep you safe and secure.
Ready for Expert Landscape Lighting Ideas That Also Keep You Safe? Talk to Us
Landscape lighting doesn’t just make your home and plants look beautiful — it offers a serious layer of security.
Lighting makes your property less attractive to intruders while keeping you more aware of your surroundings.
And it does all this without glaring, obnoxious light that ruins your cool-home vibe.
Can security lights and landscape lights work together? We’d love to show you how.
Tropical Gardens offers expert outdoor lighting services in Sarasota that beautifully illuminate your home while also providing security.
Let’s get started.
Give us a call or fill out our form today! Our team of Sarasota designers will help you create the perfect pairing of beauty and security. No need to be afraid of the dark.
