Bad Landscape Lighting in Raleigh: You Can't Un-See It

When I’m in the middle of an install, I often take the long way home. Often, I ride through neighborhoods at night, looking at all the other homes. Also, I’ve spent more than 35 years helping to light concert and theatrical stages, so I can’t help it. I’m always studying light. That habit taught me to spot bad landscape lighting from the street, all over Raleigh and the Triangle.

And honestly, I see a lot of lighting jobs that just aren’t good. Nobody really set out to do a bad job. Usually, nobody ever showed the homeowner what good outdoor lighting looks like.

The Neighbors’ Blind Spot

Most homeowners only ever see the outdoor lighting the neighbors put in. If the house down the street has a light on every corner and a row of path lights, that starts to look like “landscape lighting.” It becomes the standard by default.

What most people have never seen is the work of the true outdoor lighting masters. Janet Lennox Moyer wrote some of the foundational books on landscape lighting and has been doing lighting since the early 80’s.

Eleftheria Deko’s studio in Athens not only lights ancient monuments in Greece but has illuminated the Olympics and several five-star restaurants.

Likewise, both appear in the book Masters of Landscape Lighting, along with many other talented designers from around the world. I’m proud that my own work appears in that book also.

Once you’ve seen what those designers do with light and shadow, the corner-and-path-lighting look never feels quite the same again.

Wooded Chapel Hill driveway at dusk lit from the trees, avoiding the runway look of bad landscape lighting — On a long, wooded drive like this one in Chapel Hill, I’d never suggest lining it with path lights like a runway. Here, I am using 3 different lighting methods from downlighting in the trees, to up lighting as well as some cross lighting to create not only shadows but safety, depth, and dimension.

Fixture Sellers VS Designers

There are a lot of good, hard-working people installing outdoor lights. But many of them are really in the business of selling fixtures. They count the lights, set them out and aim them up, some fixture sellers never come back at night to adjust them. This is how you get hot spots or glare bombs lining a driveway.

Instead, a lighting designer starts somewhere else. A lighting designer starts with the effect: what you’ll feel when you pull into the driveway, sit on the back patio, or look out the window at night. The fixtures are just the tools to get there. However, both approaches put lights in the ground, but they lead to very different visuals in the evening.

Lighting a Home Like a Broadway Stage

Think about the best concert or Broadway show you’ve ever seen. It wasn’t lit evenly from front to back. It had ambiance, atmosphere and drama. Your eye was led exactly where the story needed it to go.

Overall, that’s how I approach a property as a lighting designer. Some areas are lit and some stay dark on purpose. Those darker, mysterious spaces are what give the lit areas their drama.

I call these moments visionettes: something lit, something dark, then something lit again. In the end, walking your property should feel like moving from scene to scene.

A patio corner at night with an uplit multi-trunk tree, lantern-style shadow bollards along a stepping-stone walk to a lattice-topped fence, and striped shadows falling across the slate patio — These custom shadow bollards throw patterns onto the corners of the walkway, and striped shadows fall across the slate like a lit stage floor. Leaving the rest in shadow keeps it cozy and private, and the homeowner can look out from a soaking tub beside two huge windows to the garden hidden behind the fence.

A white garden pavilion behind a multi-stem magnolia, lit so the leaf shadows fall across the wall, with a flagstone path leading through a hedge opening toward a softly lit walk — The fig tree’s shadows play across the pavilion wall, and the path through the ivy-covered arbor slips through the hedge toward a soft glowing wall. Leaving most of the scene dark on purpose makes you wonder what’s around the corner — what mystery lies ahead?

Why Lower Lumens Fix Bad Landscape Lighting

One of the biggest surprises for clients is that brighter isn’t better! A lot of the bad landscape lighting I see on my night drives comes from fixtures that are simply way too bright and overpowering.

High-output lights create glare, hot spots as well as flat, washed-out look. Lower-output fixtures, placed well, give you depth, texture and soft edges using more fixtures instead of one bright light source. As a result, your eyes relax, and the landscape welcomes you.

For example, take a giant live oak. The quick fix is one powerful light blasting up the trunk. As a result, it’s blinding up close, and the canopy above disappears into darkness. I’d rather use seven or more lower-lumen lights, each one placed to bring out a different limb or layer of the canopy. The tree looks three-dimensional and alive, and nobody gets a light in their eyes or can see a light source.

Blue-hour backyard with uplit crape myrtles and soft, low-glare lights, the opposite of bad landscape lighting — Lower-output lights, more of them, and shadows left on purpose: the crape myrtles, stairs, hostas and fence backdrop each get their own soft light while the lawn stays dark. Like a good stage set, you notice the welcoming scene , not the lights.

Good vs. Bad Landscape Lighting

So, here’s a quick side-by-side of what I look for.

What bad landscape lighting looks like:

A builder package: a light on each corner and a couple of path lights.
Path lights lined up like an airport runway.
Glare and hot spots from fixtures that are too bright or poorly aimed.
A flat, even wash with no shadow and no depth or design thought.
Light pointing straight up into the sky and possibly into the neighbors’ windows.
Cheap fixtures that fade, corrode and fail after a few seasons.

What good lighting looks like:

Layers of light, featuring contrast and shadow.
Trees, landscape, and architecture featured as the stars.
Moonlighting from high in mature trees, casting soft shadows on the lawn.
Glare control, so you see the effect and not the fixture.
The right color temperature for brick, stone and foliage.
Less lumens, to make the lighting more pleasing to your eye.
Solid brass and copper fixtures built to last a lifetime.

Why I Take the Time to Educate my clients

I like to walk clients through all of this before we ever talk about price. First, I want you to understand what you’re buying and why each fixture goes where it does. Second, I want you to be able to compare bids. Two proposals can list the same number of lights and deliver completely different results. And I want you to end up with a showplace, not a checklist.

Here’s the funny part. In fact, most people don’t really appreciate good lighting until they’ve been exposed to it.

After that, they can’t un-see it. I like to joke that I’m turning my clients into lighting snobs. Once you know what good lighting is, you notice every glaring light on the drive home.

How I Work

Every project starts with me at your property for an initial design consultation. Also, I design every job myself. Lite Visions is locally owned, not a franchise, and lighting is all we do. I serve Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Wake Forest and the surrounding Triangle areas. In north Raleigh, that includes gated communities near Falls Lake such as Bay Leaf Farm, Sanctuary at Falls Lake and Morning Mountain Estates.

After installation, I’m the one making the final nighttime adjustments. Finally, our Lighting Preservation Program keeps the design looking its best as your landscape grows.

Let’s Take a Look Together

If you’re curious what your home could look like after dark, I’d enjoy showing you. Reach out through litevisions.com or call Nine one Nine-518-9950 to set up a design consultation. You can also browse my portfolio.

Joe Yanulevich, Lite Visions Landscape Lighting, Raleigh, NC

You Can’t Un-See Bad Landscape Lighting: What Every Triangle Homeowner Should Know