A light in the dark: six reasons to fill outdoor spaces with light

With our increasingly 24-hour lifestyles, exterior environments with the right type and level of light are a growing necessity in home, commercial and public spaces.

By Platek, Frassinagodiciotto, and James Wormald

January 26, 2022 | 11:00 pm CUT

Exterior architectural lighting enhances the modern majesty of this Maltese villa's foreground. Photo: L&L Luce&Light

Modern interior living environments’ fine-tuned lightscapes feature a delicate mix of ambient, task and accent lighting to perfectly balance performance and pleasure. But one area of a home’s visibility that’s still so easily overlooked is the exterior.

Hardwearing and weatherproof exterior light manufacturers like Platek offer many different solutions that bring, function, safety and security to exterior spaces, including using standing lights as buoy-like waypoints, allowing residents and visitors to find their way in dark and unfamiliar surroundings; projecting lights either in the format of subtle recessed versions or high-powered, cannon-like contraptions that highlight a building’s architectural features like it’s attending a film premiere; and homely, comforting lights that give all the design cues of a warm, cosy living space, only with extra durability for a long life left out in the elements once users retire inside.

Here are six useful reasons why the right combination of exterior lighting is more necessity than luxury.

Maine Coast House by Marcus Gleysteen Architects uses freestanding and recessed porch lights to guide residents home. Photo: Trent Bell

Functionality

Although time spent in the immediate vicinity of a home or building is short, it’s often vital to be able to see what you’re doing. At ingress/egress points, suitable lighting helps users guide keys into doors, cars into driveways and bins out of sight, safely. While a well-lit route offers peace of mind to solitary walkers in secluded public spaces, the same can be said for private homes, too.

The exterior lighting layout of the Maine Coast House by Marcus Gleysteen Architects, for example, brings a feeling of safety with well-placed standing lights positioned like sentries, guiding you down the garden path safely, while a recessed porch light stops late-night scratches in the door paint.

Both the Olzstyn Sports Center (top) and the Davis House (bottom) use recessed step lights to improve safety around the properties. Photo (Davis House): Elizabeth Felicella

Safety

Even when all by yourself you can be in a fair amount of danger in low-light conditions. The contemporary garden landscape seems laden with hazards such as icy stairs or perfectly designed toe-stubbing ornaments. Integrated lighting set into the slippery steps alongside the Olzstyn Sports Center in Olzstyn, Poland, for example, ensures the route doesn’t bring injury to any of its customers. And bringing in the early morning milk isn’t an issue for residents of the Davis House in New York, USA, meanwhile, who can traverse the home’s shadowed concrete staircase with assurance.

Recessed lights sit under the canopy of House IMP in Trento, Italy, reducing security blindspots. Photo: Giovanni De Sandre

Security

The mind always fears most what it can’t see. Even behind the safety of security systems, the thought of something or someone lurking in the shadows can mean uncomfortable evenings or even sleepless nights. One remedy to this, is to remove the shadows.

McCauley Culkin had to put on an elaborate show and dance to ward off burglars from his property. Most of the time, however, just lighting up the immediate vicinity – as this property does in Trento, Italy, with a recessed-light canopy circling the residence – is enough to deter unwanted visitors.

Platek's floor- or wall-positioned Sun (top) and Target (bottom) lighting either highlights or creates detail in buildings and structures

Frontage

Houses can project the most detailed plasterwork mouldings, colourful brick patterns or have the shine of a glass spacecraft, but once the sun goes down, all that goes out the window if it can’t be seen. Architectural lighting such as Platek’s Sun or Target can show off a building’s looks, but painting with a palette of light and shadow adds dramatic angles to a building’s facade, without the need for major construction.

The Shenzhen Gemdale Center (top) outlines its facade with light, while the Dar Il-Hanin Samaritan house's assorted sculptural garden structures (bottom) are lit up like art exhibits. Photos: Shu He & L&L Luce&Light

In the Shenzhen Gemdale Center, for example, the building’s bamboo-like facade is made up of a growing pattern of white stone, lit from below to add focus and detail to its visual presence, like a line drawing. Meanwhile, Dar Il-Hanin Samaritan is a cubist’s surrealist dream in Santa Venera, Malta. Using a combination of standing and hidden lights from L&L Luce&Light, the project highlights the varied geometries of its multiple buildings and gardens.

House FFF features an outdoor living space at the rear of the garden, complete with homely seating arrangement with floor lamp. Photo: Giovanni De Sandre

Leisure

Moving on to the rear, both private and commercial spaces are utilising outdoor space much more than ever before. Even in colder climates, where the addition of fire pits and outdoor space heaters provide users with year-round relaxation in outdoor environments.

Combined with waterproof yet comfortable furniture and simple, accessible storage, weatherproof outdoor lights that look like indoor lights can turn patios and terraces into second (or third or fourth) living spaces. Like in the garden of House FFF in Trento, Italy, where a seating arrangement with a homely but hardened outdoor lamp creates a tranquil zone at the rear of the garden, enveloped by nature.

Both the Naturescape installation in Milan (top) and New York's High Line (bottom) bring nighttime foliage to life with hidden lights. Photos: Giovanni De Sandre & Iwan Baan, courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Ambience

Even when the weather really does shut you inside, the inaccessible garden can still be a resource to be visually admired. So whether you’re looking out at it from under a gazebo, behind protective glass, or rushing through under an umbrella, outdoor space should always be presented in its best light.

By hiding low-level garden lights in the foliage, for example, this Naturescape installation by Frassinagodiciotto in Milan, Italy, shows how small fairytale settings can be created to admire from afar. While the award-winning High Line route in New York City, USA, uses the technique to bring a magical, midsummer night’s dream quality to commuters’ wanderings through the city.

Project Gallery

Related Products

Related Brands

Platek

Manufacturer

Rodengo-Saiano, Italy