Outdoor Recessed Lighting: All Tucked Away

When you want lighting that brightens up the outside of your home, you might like outdoor recessed lighting. This style of lighting is unobtrusive to neighbors because it only lights up the areas you need to have illuminated.

Recessed lighting is a type of lighting that is accomplished by inserting a can, or high hat, into a ceiling and adding a light. This is repeated numerous times around an area. Recessed lighting can also be tucked into walls, steps, or floors. These are all examples of outdoor lighting uses.

Lighting Steps

Step lights are made or inserted into the steps of porches or decks outdoors. These special fixtures light the way when you are going up or down, and keep you from tripping on the edge of a step. They are good to have for safety, as well as attractive because the fan of light washes the across the step.

One very practical place to put outdoor recessed lighting is in the soffits around the house. The soffits are the overhangs of the roof of your house. There should be room to install recessed lighting cans in them. The lights should be placed every six to seven feet along the soffit.

Reducing Light Pollution

The lights shining down from the soffits will light up the area under them in a half-cone shape. The wide bottoms of the half-cones will overlap. The nice thing is that there will be no glare shining up into the night sky to interfere with star-gazing. In other words, outdoor recessed lighting reduces light pollution.

This is a concept that emerged in the 1980’s as people began thinking about the effects of light on humans, animals, and the environment. When glare, light clutter, light trespass, or other forms of light pollution occur, ecosystems are affected. Outdoor recessed lighting is one way you can keep your house from being a light pollution offender.

Recessed wall lights are perfect for adding spots of light on dark walls. If you have recessed lighting coming from the soffits above, there may be places in between that need a little dash of light. Recessed wall lights can provide it. They are also good for an area like beside steps where there are no soffits for can lights.

Recessed Wall Lighting

If you have recessed wall lights that are larger, they may be used in place of the soffit lights. You put them at intervals around your home so that they can light up the outside. The disadvantage with this arrangement is that these lights face outwards so may cause glare for you, your neighbors, and maybe even people passing by in cars.

To use recessed lighting outside, it is necessary to buy lighting that is specifically designed for it. If you use indoor lighting, it will not hold up to the elements such as rain, heat, cold, and ice. Proper outdoor fixtures will last a long time in any kind of weather.

Outdoor recessed lighting is helpful for those who want to brighten up the exterior of their homes without causing light pollution. The lights can be plenty bright enough to make task areas workable and general areas livable.