The back of the house is not curb appeal
The front of a property gets judged from the street. The patio is for people sitting in it. That flips most of the design rules. Nobody cares how the patio reads from the road. What matters is whether the space still works after dark.The short version: the patio deserves its own plan. A roofline system does a great deal for the front of a house and almost nothing for where you sit. Two spaces, two briefs, and one design conversation that covers both.
Glare is the enemy
The fastest way to make an outdoor space unpleasant is a bright fixture in somebody's line of sight. Look at a bright source and your eyes stop adapting to the dark. Aim
https://evercrestlighting.com/ for light you notice the effect of but not the source of.
String lights overhead do more than they should be able to
The reason bistro and string lighting works so well outdoors is that they make a boundary. A patio without them has no top to it. With them it reads as a defined space. Keep them soft, always.None of this costs much more than doing it badly, because the difference is mostly placement and color rather than the number of fixtures on the invoice.
Layers, roughly in order
Think of it as layers, not one fixture. Something overhead for general warmth. Something low for the steps, the edges and the path in. And something aimed at whatever is worth seeing out there. Put them on different circuits, since you want a bright option and a quiet one.
Restaurants and businesses face this too
A restaurant patio has to solve this every single night. Warm overhead light is the difference between seating outside and not. The same rules apply, only the consequences are measured in covers.
More nights outside
An unlit patio has a usable season that ends when the days get short. With light, the hours stop being the limit. In the Upstate that is a real number of extra evenings, and most of them happen after dark. The lighting is what converts them into usable time.
Warm light near where people sit
Anybody who has sat under a bright outdoor light in July knows what shows up. Warmer light is less interesting to most insects, which happens to be the same answer aesthetics gives. It will not eliminate anything, and that is not a claim worth making. But it is worth factoring in.If a permanent system covers the rear elevation, set it warm and low for evenings outside, and the patio and the house agree.
Getting your patio looked at
Patio lighting gets designed by somebody standing on the patio, preferably at night. EverCrest Lighting does patio and outdoor living lighting for residential and commercial properties in Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina, out of Greenville. Consultations are free. Call (864) 252-1732 or email
[email protected].