Earlier in his career, designer Randy Angell didn’t use colored light much. But he’s changed his position, thanks to technological developments of the past few years.
“That is mainly because we have the opportunity to make sure all the lights are the same color,” says the CEO of Randy Angell Designs, Plano, Texas. “Before, your lights inside the water came from one manufacturer, and then you had your lights outside the water from a different manufacturer.” This made it difficult to match up tones.
If he used colored lighting, he’d restrict it to the water,applying white light to the landscape and hardscape.
Now, you can buy colored lighting for wet and dry applications from the same manufacturer. Some lights can even be tuned to existing systems, making them easier for renovations. In addition, some newer LED systems provide hundreds of color choices so designers and homeowners can find just the right hue.
Between that and the fact that colored LED lights now are controlled by smartphone, designers like the ability for homeowners to change their light with their moods.
“It gives us the best of both worlds,” Angell says. “If the client is throwing a big party and they want a little more excitement and panache, they can use color to bring the whole backyard to life. But for normal everyday ... you can introduce something that is a little bit more soothing and have a completely different mood.”
Tal Thevenot also came to colored lights later in the game.
“I used to be kind of a lighting purist,” says the CEO of AquaTerra Outdoors in Carrollton, Texas. “I like a lot of warm, white light, keeping things clean, minimalist and simple. My natural design is more of a cohesive environment, where I don’t like to overpower one piece, and certainly color lighting is very, very dramatic. There’s no way getting around that.”
But clients are becoming more exposed to color lighting — and more likely to ask for it. They see photos online of backyards with immaculately coordinated colored lighting. Or they enjoy it in more commercial and resort settings, hoping to create these effects in their backyards.
“Lighting advancements are the most visible advancement for our clients,” Angell reports. “It seems every consult I go on, when they start listing out their priorities for the design, lighting is always in the top five priorities.”
And Thevenot has found that he likes to play with this feature in his own backyard, especially for holidays.
Here, designers offer tips for using colored lighting in the wet and dry settings in your backyards.
Forward Thinking
While colored lights have come a long way, they still carry the risk of getting carried away.
“As with any features that you bring into an outdoor design, if you don’t do it with a light touch and really be careful with how you’re using elements, it can very quickly go from a beautiful backyard to Las Vegas and just be kind of over the top,” Angell says.
While that is more than appropriate for some applications, he says, it isn’t always. To prevent it from happening when it’s not wanted, Andy Kaner likes to use restraint with color.
“We’re not just doing color for color’s sake, but actually looking at the entire space to see in which areas you want an accent piece to stand out” says the president of Aquatic Consultants in Palmetto Bay, Fla.
This particularly pertains to the landscape. Another benefit to today’s colored lighting systems is their ability to control and coordinate the pool lights with the landscape lights. But some designers still like to use a light hand when using colored light on the landscape — or avoid it altogether.
Outside the pool, Angell prefers to use colored lighting for individual features — not plants — rather than washing color over the whole area.
“Maybe spotlights that light up a sculpture or art piece, or a decorative panel,” he explains. “I don’t design in LED strip lighting every place I could. There are always 100 opportunities to light things up and add that bit of drama. But I like to pare it back, so I’ll use the LED strip lights in places that are important within the design. … I don’t want to just throw it everywhere.”
To combine beauty with safety, Angell also may use colored strip lighting to outline steps, offering a glow that can be white or present in any color.
These designers tend to avoid throwing color onto plants. Instead, they’ll use warm white to bring out their natural coloring.
Kaner finds that dark pool finishes tend to absorb colored light. Because most of his pools are finished in black, or dark grays and blues, he generally avoids colored illumination in the pool interior. However, he will light water elements outside the pool — a laminar arc sprouting from the deck, a vertical foam jet spraying up, rain cascades or sheet falls. “That way it stands out like an accent piece,” he says.
Scott Cohen, president of The Green Scene in Chatsworth, Calif., likes to go even more subtle when incorporating color, basically restricting it to the water and trying to stay in the blue family. The lighter blues that are now available provide the ability to add a soft glow around stepping pads or islands, as well as in catch basins.
Freestanding feature
Even when taking this more subtle approach, Thevenot finds that the lighting has become a more important feature in designs. Now, it requires more upfront consideration than before, when lighting was placed more in reaction to the other elements in the yard.
“Fifteen or 20 years ago, I was using basic lighting for ambiance, and a lot for safety,” he says. “Now it’s becoming a feature of its own.”
In some instances, he’ll choose a material or feature because of how it will look when illuminated. This means the lighting needs to be considered from the very beginning of the design process.
Angell also factors colored lighting in his designs from the beginning phases. In some projects, he’ll use decorative panels that have interesting textures or patterns laser cut into them, chosen specifically for how they’ll reflect the colored lighting. He may finish them in white so they can show the colored light in its purest tones.
But in highlighting certain features or surfaces, designers should maintain the environment’s cohesiveness. Don’t make them too bright or distracting. “You don’t want to create so much drama in one spot that you’re taking away from everything else,” Thevenot says.
Nor should designers just use colored lighting in one spot, which would throw things out of balance, he suggests. You can use colored lighting on a less glamorous feature, such as a wall, to help balance the weight given to a feature that’s innately more attention-getting.
