Planning Your Outdoor Pond Lighting Design

Your outdoor pond lighting design is the first step to creating a relaxing waterfront experience for everyone to enjoy even at night.

Wether your constructing a pond to be built from scratch or already own a natural or man-made pond, the use of pond lighting is critical to the beauty and enjoyment you'll get from your pond at night.

How much better would you feel if you could spend your evenings in a beautifully lit, tranquil space enjoying the water view that an outdoor pond can give you?

If you are designing a man made pond you have many options to choose from. You'll determine the size, layout, location and what features you'll want to include so your outdoor pond lighting stands out at night.

Lighting Around The Pond

If you already have a pond, take a look at your surrounding landscape and notice all the natural beauty already present. Use what you see as inspiration to enhance the pond's look and make it all flow together with outdoor lighting.

If you have some nice stone work, show it off. Maybe adding a beautiful array of plants, water lillies and flowers can make your landscape look more relaxing.

Add pieces of art or sculptures around your pond. Use properly placed outdoor lighting to create shaddows on your sculptures for a more dramatic effect.

Lighting Over The Pond

Downlighting over your pond is a great way to show off its brilliance at night. Since ponds are known for their calm waters, downlighting is a perfect way to reflect the calming light given off by your fixtures.

This effect is also commonly called moon lighting, since it resembles the subtle light given off by the moon at night.

Downlighting is also a great way to focus attention to any features in the pond and it's surrounding landscape. For example, downlighting could show off stepping stones or lilly pads located inside the pond.

It's beam spread might spread wide enough to show off any plants or trees that set the tone for the overall look you want to achieve with outdoor pond lighting.

Its also a great way to accentuate the smooth, flat surface of slow moving water. This type of lighting leaves a nice glass like shimmer on the surface of your outdoor pond.

Tree Lighting Effects & Your Pond

If there are trees located around your pond you can turn your pond into a beautiful reflection pool using outdoor tree lighting.

The size of the trees, their distance in relation to the pond, the viewing angle of onlookers, foliage, and the type of light fixture used all play an integral part in creating this magical outdoor pond lighting effect.

You may need to introduce commercial outdoor lamps into the mix if you're lighting large trees with lots of foliage. Consider the viewing distance of onlookers since the further away they are from the light source, the stronger the lamp you'll need.

The size of your pond and expansiveness of the landscape surrounding it could help determine if less expensive low voltage lighting will work for you.

Pond Lighting Water Effects

Beautiful water effects can steal the show and make your pond a star. Underwater lighting effects can help you focus attention to the parts of your pond you wouldn't otherwise get to show.

Underwater lighting can be used to show off some spectacular water effects. Waterfalls are beautiful at night with the proper underwater lighting.

You will typically find two types of water effects which include rough aerated water and smooth non-aerated water. Each of which must be properly lit to create your desired effect.

Rough aerated water contains many air bubbles, therefore underwater lighting fixtures must be positioned directly below the water's falls. The light reacts with the air bubbles in the turbulent water making it seem like it's glowing.

Smooth non-aerated water lacks the air bubbles that rough water has. You'll need to position your underwater lights so they shine on the smooth outer surface area of the cascading falls. Your lighting will reflect off of the smooth lines of the falling water.

While underwater lighting can be used to achieve this result, even outdoor lighting fixtures mounted outside the water can be aimed towards the smooth outer surface of the water's falls.

Don't have a water fall? Use outdoor pond lighting to uplight surrounding plants, rocks, sculptures, or fountains.