How do you create depth in a backyard with outdoor lighting?

Light should be added in layers, with some fixtures near the house, some in a middle ground, and others at the far edge of the property. This prevents the yard from looking flat after dark.

Most backyards lose their edges at night. When you go outside, unable to see your back fence and the trees around the perimeter, it can feel like you’re stepping into a void. The yard that felt so spacious at three in the afternoon feels like a small room by nine.

When it comes to lighting large spaces, we use three-plane layering. This is how we overlap different types of lights to create a space that feels organic and lively. To give you an example of this at work, imagine accent spots being placed by a specimen tree or a pergola, anchoring the middle ground of your yard. Soft wall washes go near the house, covering the foreground. And then add a few low-output uplights on the perimeter trees just to make the yard feel a little larger.

Reading this, you may think that layering lighting is something you do horizontally, placing lights at different distances from the house. But the other big part that makes layered lighting work is verticality. Uplighting on mature tree trunks or stone chimneys from the base, just to give two examples, reintroduces height that the dark nighttime sky would normally steal.

The trick to making all of this work is to hide the fixtures. Your eye may otherwise be tempted to latch onto a visible bulb, and that can break the spell. You see hardware rather than design. This can be avoided by tucking fixtures behind shrubs, into rock borders, and along the base of plantings.

Color temperature holds the composition together. Warm white from the 2700K to 3000K range keeps the contrast in place between lit areas and shadows. That contrast is where the perception of depth comes from. Cooler light tends to flatten color and remove the variation that makes layered lighting feel beautiful. It also feels a bit like a parking lot.