These ingenious outdoor lighting techniques from the experts will help you add another dimension to even the very smallest of gardens, creating the illusion of space and a warm and welcoming effect
If you’ve arranged your garden into different zones, screened challenging boundaries, used a clever paint shade, borrowed views, added focal points and thought hard about paving and pots, there’s still one more element to consider. Lighting can have the most dramatic effect on how your garden is perceived. In addition to boosting safety and security, it’s another tool you can use to make a small garden feel bigger and more welcoming, helping you maximise available space.
WORK FROM THE INSIDE OUT
A good motivation for lighting a small garden is the positive effect it can have on the view of the garden from indoors. It can soften your home’s interior and contributes to a sense of the garden being a usable extension of the home.
Jo Mann, founder and director of Light House Designs (light-housedesigns.com) explains: “Houses with small gardens often have large bifold doors opening onto the garden, and these are usually without a window dressing. At night, without the softness of a window dressing, the glass of these doors becomes a mirror, which makes for quite an unfriendly environment inside the kitchen or drawing room. But if you light the garden, you’ll draw the eye through the reflection and outside. The effect of this is that the inside space feels bigger, and the space outside becomes usable.”
Sally Storey, creative director at John Cullen Lighting (johncullenlighting.com) concurs: “A small garden in an urban environment should be considered an extra room and entertainment space. It’s important to light something immediately outside the window – such as the terrace – as this will draw the eye outside and extend the view. To do this, control the light intensity outside so that it is greater than the light within the room. Once the focus of the eye is outside, the rest of the features can be enjoyed and become part of the space. Understanding the levels of internal and external light is essential. For best results, the interior should be slightly dimmed.”
CREATE AN ILLUSION OF DEPTH
Light makes an impact only when it touches a surface, so once you begin working outside,
