Your landscaping is beautiful, you love the brick or stone accents on your home, and your mature trees have finally grown to be towering focal points.
Nighttime arrives, and suddenly everything is aglow with an icy shade of white that transforms your otherwise welcoming home into the aesthetic reminiscent of a downtown parking garage.
At Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of St. Louis, we understand color temperature – and it matters. When it comes to residential landscape lighting, warm lighting is having its moment in the proverbial spotlight.
What Is Color Temperature in Outdoor Lighting?
When we talk about warm or cool lighting, we’re describing the color temperature, which is measured in Kelvins. Lower Kelvin temperatures produce warmer-looking lighting with tones of soft amber and gold. Higher Kelvin temperatures produce cooler light that appears white and can even teeter on the blue side.
For many residential landscape lighting applications, warmer white light in the 2700K to 3000K range creates a softer, more natural appearance, similar to the warm illumination you likely prefer inside your home.
Warm Lighting Complements Any Type of Home and Landscape
Areas like ours, with loads of beautiful architecture, benefit from the subtlety of warm lighting. Brick homes, limestone, natural stone, Tudor details, traditional facades, mature landscaping, and established neighborhoods all respond beautifully to warmer exterior illumination.
Cool white lighting can look harsh and can compete with the beautiful details of your property. Warm white lighting reveals the textures and colors in a much more natural way.
Think of cool white as utilitarian – task lighting, perhaps. Warm white lighting is the exact opposite, but it still works to provide safely lit walkways, steps, and otherwise darkened areas around the home.
At Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, we believe that outdoor lighting works best when it feels like a natural extension of the home’s architecture, rather than something that was added afterward. Your lighting should look like it was made for your home and landscaping, and when you work with us to design and install it, you can be assured it will.
So Cool White Outdoor Lighting Is Bad?
Cool white exterior lighting isn’t necessarily bad. There are always exceptions to the standard, where cooler or brighter lighting makes better sense. Certain contemporary architectural styles, task-oriented outdoor areas, or a specific design effect might all call for a cooler color temperature.
Outdoor lighting design isn’t governed by one blanket rule. Your home’s materials, architecture, landscaping, and other features will determine the right color temperature and brightness. Because the goal is never to choose the trendiest color temperature. It’s to choose the lighting that makes your property look its very best when the sun goes down.
Warm Outdoor Lighting Can Feel More Inviting
Warm lighting inherently carries an air of comfort and – well, warmth. We can associate warm lighting with the coziness of a fireplace or candles. Think of the feeling of an intimate restaurant patio with warm outdoor string lights or a lamplit library on a cool, rainy night.
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of St. Louis can bring that feeling to your outdoor patio, porch, or deck to create an ideal space for gathering or relaxation. And there’s no better time to enjoy such exploits than the beginning of autumn when evening arrives earlier and the warm glow of outdoor lighting can set the perfect fall scene.
Searching for landscape lighting near me?
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of St. Louis can take your home or business’ exterior to the next level with high-quality landscape lighting, professionally installed and made to last. Get in touch with us at (636) 202-0369 to schedule your consultation today!
Ask about our Shine 365 outdoor lighting warranty program and keep your outdoor lighting system shining beautifully for life!
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of St. Louis offers professional outdoor lighting repair and maintenance on any outdoor lighting system, no matter the age or who installed it.