Top 2 Landscape Lighting Tips for Your Roofline

Plus, Photo Inspiration for Roofline Lighting

Lighting your roof might seem like an unusual idea. But there are certain instances when it makes beautiful sense for your home. Our two top landscape lighting tips for your roof are:

1. Illuminate unusual or attractive features
2. Choose soft lighting

Landscape Lighting Tip 1:
Illuminate Unusual or Attractive Features

Lighting your roofline at night makes your landscape lighting portrait more complete. Without lights, the space above your front door looks like a black void, and the effect can be strange and unattractive. Not every home is suitable for roofline lighting, though. We only recommend landscape lighting for unusual or attractive features, like:

• Slate or tile roofs
• Dormers
• Decorative chimneys
• Interesting textures or embellishments on the second or third story
• Aesthetic architecture above the ground floor

This landscape lighting tip will result in a tasteful display of the interesting features of your home. In the photo above, from our friends at Hunter Industries, Inc., lighting defines the edges of the second-story dormers, and wall-washing captures the texture of the exterior.

Landscape Lighting Tip 2:
Choose Soft Lighting

It’s important that the light on your roof isn’t high intensity. The roof is a part of your overall lighting portrait, and it should never be the main focal point. Save the brightest illumination for your front door and ground level. We don’t want roofline lighting to distract from the overall picture, but to enhance it.

In our second inspiration photo from Hunter, we see the rear of the home. Primary lighting is focused on the seating area, while the ornate dormer can be enjoyed from the backyard.

Landscape Lighting Tips:
5 More Inspirational Examples

Sometimes, it’s difficult to envision how different homes would look after dark with roofline lighting. Here are five more inspirational photos to give you some bright ideas.

This charming ranch home is entirely faced with stone. Without the landscape lighting, the gables would be lost in shadow.

Here’s a customer of LUX Landscape Lighting’s Cincinnati home. Illuminating the second floor reveals that most of the house’s architectural interest isn’t on the ground floor. We get to enjoy the home in its entirety.

When we lit this customer’s home, they were concerned it would be difficult at night to walk around the garage to the front door. Lighting the facade of the garage and gables have a much friendlier and safer appeal.

The archway of this customer’s home would look strange indeed if we didn’t illuminate up to the roofline. As in a previous example, we lit up all the edges of the home, so it stands out in the dark.

In another example, roofline lighting helped feature the two-story bay window of this customer’s home. Primary focus was given to the steps, for safe navigation.

Follow LUX Landscape Lighting on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube for more landscape lighting tips. And, when you’re ready for personalized ideas for your own home, contact us.