Design and installation
One fixture at the foot of a wall can make it look carved or make it look patched. The difference is how far it sits from the surface, and that is decided on the property, wall by wall.
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NightScapes project, Southwest Florida
If the wall is hot at the base
If the lights along your house leave bright cones at the foot of the wall and nothing higher up, the fixtures are too close for the height. Set tight to a wall, a fixture grazes and shows texture. Stepped back, it washes the wall evenly. With a plant in between, it throws a shadow. Distance decides which you get.
Graze. Tight to the wall, the light skims the stone. Every joint throws a shadow and the wall looks carved.
Architectural lighting is the part of an outdoor system that lights the building itself: the walls, the entry, the columns, the stone. It is also the part most often done by habit. A fixture goes in at the foot of each wall, at whatever distance the bed allows, and the house gets what it gets.
Done on purpose, each surface is looked at for what it is. Stone wants to be grazed. Smooth stucco wants to be washed. A blank wall behind a good plant wants a shadow. A tall elevation wants light from two heights. None of it shows up on a drawing, which is why we set positions on the property itself.
The palms and planting in front of the house are part of the same picture. They have their own page: uplighting the palms in front of the house.
Facade wall washing
An even wash comes from setback, beam width and spacing chosen together, never from brighter lamps. Light falls off with height, so a tall elevation is lit in more than one lift. This house front starts unlit. Scroll, and it is built up the way we do it on a property: the entry, then the walls, then the ground.
First
The front door is the one part of a house everyone is looking for. It is lit first and it is lit warmest, so that when everything else comes on it is still the brightest thing on the elevation.
Second
The wings are washed from the bed in front of them, held a step below the entry. This is where setback matters most: too close and you get bright cones at the base with a dark upper wall, too far and the planting throws shadows across the stucco.
Third
Light on the walk and the drive ties the house to the property. It is the lowest layer and the easiest to overdo. A wet paver court reflects everything above it, so a little light here goes a long way.
Together
Seen together, the entry still leads, the walls support it and the ground holds it all in place. If any one layer were turned up to match the door, the house would stop reading as a building and start reading as floodlit.
Ask about your houseWall grazing and wall washing
A graze sets the fixture tight to the wall so the light skims the surface. On stacked stone, coral stone and textured block every joint throws a shadow and the wall looks carved. On painted stucco the same light finds every trowel mark, patch and hairline crack, which is why stucco is washed from further back instead.
Part by part
A house front is made of parts, and each is lit as its own object. A column wants light from its base, stepped out far enough to reach the capital. An arch is lit from inside itself. A tall elevation gets a second lift from a balcony or the eave. Point at a number on this Naples entry.
An arch is lit from inside itself. Light tucked into the soffit or the reveal makes the opening glow, and the shape of the arch is drawn by the shadow at its edge. Lit from the front, the same arch goes flat.
A column is a single object and is lit as one. Tight to the base it becomes a bright shaft with a dark capital. Stepped out a little, the light reaches the top. A round column usually wants two sources so it reads as round.
Light falls off with height. A fixture that washes the ground floor well leaves the upper wall dim, and turning it up only burns the base. A tall elevation is lit in two lifts: one from the ground, one from a ledge, a balcony or the eave.
A roofline is lit from the eave down or from a lower roof up, never from the lawn. A small source under the eave draws the edge of the building against the sky and gives the upper wall the light the ground fixtures cannot carry that high.
Where the entry is raised, the steps are part of the architecture. Light under each tread draws the curve of the stair and makes it safe to climb, without a single fixture standing in the view of the house.
A facade never sits alone. The palms either side set the height of the picture and close its edges. They are lit as part of the elevation, at a level that frames the house and does not compete with it.
Glare and spill
Glass is where facade lighting fails. A beam that crosses a window is a light in the bedroom behind it, and the pane throws a reflection back at the street. Fixtures are placed on the solid wall between openings, aimed below the sill line, and checked from inside the house as well as from the road.
An uplight under a window sends its beam past the sill and into the room. From outside it looks fine. From the bed it is a lamp aimed at the ceiling all night. The fix is position, not a dimmer: the fixture moves sideways onto solid wall, or the beam is cut off below the sill with a shield.
Glass is a mirror after dark. A fixture in line with a window shows up in it as a hard point of light, seen from the drive. And where a wash crosses a run of windows, the glass reads as black holes in a lit wall. Sometimes the answer is to light the piers between the windows and let the interior lamps do the rest; a house with a few rooms softly lit from inside looks occupied and warm.
Louvered shutters and screen frames throw busy shadows under a graze, so the wall around them is washed. And any beam that misses the building carries on to the neighbor or the street. On the close lots of Old Naples and Park Shore that matters as much as how the house itself looks. Every facade is walked from the lot line before it is finished.
Level and color
A house reads as architecture when some of it is lit and some is not, when the entry leads and the walls support it. More fixtures at lower output can be balanced; one bright flood cannot, and it makes a home look like a parking lot. Warm white suits cream stucco, stone and clay tile.
There is more on choosing a color temperature for a facade. All of this is about how the house looks. What you can see from inside it is a different brief: seeing who is on the property without flooding it.
We settle it on a walkthrough of the property, against the real wall.
Ask about your houseHouse frontNightScapes Landscape Lighting
Set against the real wall.
Who does the work
NightScapes Landscape Lighting has lit house fronts in Naples since 1998. Todd and Sherry own and run it, outdoor lighting is the only work it does, and its Google Business Profile shows 63 reviews at 5.0. Facade positions are set against the real wall, by the people who will come back to adjust them.
The houses on this page are in and around Naples: Mediterranean elevations with arches and balustrades, stucco wings behind rows of palms, stone entries. We work across Port Royal, Old Naples, Aqualane Shores, the Moorings, Park Shore and Pelican Bay, where the lots are close and a facade is seen from the street, and in Grey Oaks and on Marco Island, where it is seen from a long drive or across water.
We do not sell fixtures by the box. We light the outside of houses, one wall at a time, and we look at each one from where the owner will.
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In Southwest Florida
A facade fixture in Naples lives in a planting bed a few feet from a wall, under an irrigation head, in salt air. Planting grows in front of it, mulch buries it, spray films its lens, and the finish corrodes near the Gulf. Each of those dims or bends the light, and each is predictable enough to plan for.
Foundation planting is put in small. A wash fixture set in front of a row of young shrubs has a clear path to the wall on the day it is installed. Two wet seasons later the shrubs are waist high and the fixture is lighting the back of a hedge. The wall goes dark in patches and the hedge glows. The fix is to move the fixture forward of the planting or lift it above it, and it is the single most common adjustment on an established house.
Overspray from sprinklers dries on walls and lenses as a mineral film. On a lens it dims the light and turns it patchy. On a wall it leaves a tide line, and a grazing light is very good at showing a tide line. Where a wall is to be grazed, the irrigation near it is worth a look first, and lenses near any head need cleaning as routine.
Beds here are topped up with mulch every year, and an in-ground or low fixture slowly disappears under it. A half-buried lens runs hot and throws a fraction of its light. Fixtures are set with that in mind, and digging them out is part of any service visit. Both jobs are on our maintenance plans page.
Fewer, lower sources read as architecture. One bright flood reads as a parking lot.
Close to the Gulf and the bays, salt settles on everything. Painted and plated fixtures pit and flake, and the staining can run onto the wall beneath them. Solid brass and copper darken instead and keep working, which is why material is chosen by where the fixture will sit.
A facade is also the end of a sequence. If it is the last thing a visitor sees after the gate and the drive, plan it as the end of the arrival sequence from gate to front door, inside a lighting design for the whole property.
Questions we hear
Graze or wash, why the base of a wall is hot and the top is dark, how to get a long wall even, and what color of light suits a Naples house front. These are the questions people bring when they are working out how to light the building itself, with the answers we give on the phone.
NightScapes Landscape Lighting Outdoor lighting only, Naples since 1998 Choose a question
Ask us about lighting the house. Choose a question, or call and we will answer it on the phone.
On a house, three do most of the work. Grazing puts a fixture tight to a wall so the light skims the surface and shows its texture. Washing sets the fixture back so the wall is lit evenly. Shadowing puts a plant between the light and a plain wall. Columns, arches and steps are lit as objects in their own right, usually from very close.
Grazing is light that travels along a wall at a steep angle, from a fixture close to its base. Anything that stands proud of the surface throws a shadow, so texture is exaggerated. It belongs on stone, coral stone, brick and textured block. It does not belong on smooth painted stucco, where the same light exaggerates every flaw.
The wall chooses. If the surface has texture worth showing, graze it. If it is smooth, wash it. Many houses have both: a stone entry surround that is grazed and stucco wings that are washed. The mistake is using one position for the whole elevation because it is easier to install.
Less and less. As the fixture moves out, the angle flattens, the shadows in the texture shorten, and the effect drifts toward a wash. There is no hard line. We set it on the property by moving the fixture until the stone looks the way it should from where you stand.
The fixture is too close for the height it is being asked to cover, or its beam is too narrow. Brighter lamps make the base hotter without lifting the top. The answer is more setback, a wider beam, or a second lift of light higher on the building.
With spacing and setback worked out together, and the same lamp in every fixture. Uneven walls usually come from fixtures at different distances, or from lamps of different ages and outputs. A deliberate scallop, where each fixture draws its own cone, is also a legitimate choice. It just has to be regular.
Warm white suits most Naples houses, because it flatters cream stucco, stone and clay tile. Cooler light can suit a modern white or gray elevation. It is chosen against the actual wall, with samples. Our LED page goes into color temperature in more detail.
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Tell us what the walls are made of, how tall the elevation is, and what you want people to notice first. We walk it with you and design the options around the real surface.
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