It is imperative as a lighting professional, to familiarize yourself with the different styles of landscape designs. There is no single correct approach to lighting an outdoor space since each client will have unique preferences, styles, and design elements. A previous blog post discussed a modern landscape design, but there are still other important landscape designs to cover.
This week’s blog post discusses the key elements of a traditional landscape design and illustrates how outdoor landscape lighting can enhance your clients’ traditionally designed outdoor spaces.
What is Traditional Landscape Design?
The vast outdoor spaces of large estates, palaces, religious complexes, and government buildings of the 1700s-1900s inspired the traditional landscape design. These landscapes had expansive gardens featuring fountains, statues, and well-looked after plants. These landscapes were all immaculately maintained. After all, these spaces were status symbols, emphasizing the important roles that the inhabitants of these spaces had in their respective societies.
A traditional landscape design has a more refined aesthetic, compared to other types of landscape designs. Each detail in a traditional landscape design is carefully thought out and executed in a way to create one cohesive and grand outdoor setting.
Key Elements of a Traditional Landscape Design
When creating an outdoor landscape lighting design for a client with a traditional landscape, consider these key elements to effectively enhance and highlight the outdoor space:
- Symmetry and Balance: Layouts that are symmetrical and balanced are key to establishing a traditional landscape look. Straight lines, geometric shapes, and orderly patterns are typically seen in a traditional landscape. This also gives a sense of formality and structure to the outdoor space.
- Well-Maintained Plants: Neatly trimmed foliage is another key element. Pruned hedges, boxwoods, structured gardens, and topiaries are some examples of the typical greenery you’d typically find in a traditional landscape design. They all come together to create a polished, refined look.
- Hardscapes: Stone, brick, and other such classic materials are used for pathways, patios, and walls.
- Focal Points: Fountains, statues, arbors, trellises and other eye-catching elements are thoughtfully inserted into a traditional landscape and make excellent focal points. They create visual interest and emphasize important areas of the outdoor space.
- Defined Spaces: Rows of plants, hedges, or formal pathways, clearly creating separate and defined spaces. They create a structured way to view the outdoor space.
- Choices of Plants: Roses, flowering shrubs, and green hedging plants are top picks for plants in a traditional landscape. Color palette options range from bold jewel tones to neutral whites and pretty pastels.
- Orderly Lawns and Pathways: Expanses of manicured lawns and gravel pathways maintain a clean, formal appearance, reinforcing the sense of organized beauty.
How to Light a Traditional Landscape
Symmetry, balance, and order are essential design elements for a traditional landscape. Traditional landscapes usually bring to mind grandeur and high sophistication. With these concepts of traditional landscapes in mind, here are some ideas to incorporate outdoor landscape lighting to emphasize the beauty of the traditional landscape:
- Use symmetrical and balanced lighting: Evenly spaced path lightscan provide enough visibility and that touch of elegance to any pathway, stairway, or rows of hedges. However, avoid placing path lights in two parallel lines, as that will create a harsh runway look.
- Focus on Focal Points: Traditional landscapes incorporate many focal points such as hedges, trees, water fountains, and statues. For a discreet and clean look, well lightscan draw attention to focal points without drawing attention to the light fixture itself. Underwater lights give water features the perfect glow at night.
- Light the Stairs:For staircases or steps in the outdoor space, increase safety by installing step lights that provide guidance without disrupting the clean lines.
- Accentuate Topiaries:Highlight topiaries and other greenery by using up lights or other low-level or ground lights. These light fixtures will give a soft wash of light that emphasize the texture and shape of the plants without overpowering the overall landscape design.
- Frame Hardscapes with Subtle Lighting: Illuminate walls, columns, or stone features with downlightsor integrated hardscape lights to showcase the texture of stone or brickwork.
Light up Traditional Landscapes with LightCh8in
When coming up with a lighting design for your clients, you want to showcase their outdoor spaces so that they shine. Knowing the different landscape designs can help you tailor an outdoor landscape lighting system that perfectly complements them all. A traditional landscape design takes inspiration from the grandeur of outdoor spaces from the past.
Sign up or log in to your LightCh8in account now! We have everything you need to light up your clients’ traditional landscapes. From bronze outdoor light fixtures, like up lights, pathlights, downlights, and more, to direct burial cable, LEDs, and other lighting accessories, find it all at LightCh8in.