Design and installation
At night a screen cage is a mirror. Light the inside and all you see is your own fixtures in the mesh. Light what is beyond it, keep the deck low, and the screen disappears.
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If the screen has turned into a mirror
If you sit on the lanai after dark and all you can see in the screen is your own lights, the inside is brighter than the outside. Lit mesh glows and glass reflects, and both hide whatever is darker behind them. Turn the deck down, light the planting beyond the cage a little brighter, and you see through it again.
You see through the screen. The planting beyond the cage is the brightest thing in view, so the eye goes straight through the mesh to it. The few lights inside are low and shielded, and none of them shows in the screen.
A NightScapes lanai, photographed from inside the cage. The haze and reflections are a simulation drawn over the photo to show the effect; the photo itself is as taken.
A pool cage is fine mesh, and fine mesh behaves like a sheer curtain. In daylight you look straight through it, because the garden outside is far brighter than the lanai. At night the balance flips. The lanai is lit, the yard is black, and the lit mesh throws the room back at you. The sliders do the same from inside the house.
It is why adding light to a lanai so often makes it worse. More fixtures inside the cage mean more reflections and a darker-looking yard. The fix runs the other way: fewer, lower, shielded sources inside, and the real lighting outside, on the palms and planting that the screen is there to let you look at.
Nearly every pool home in Naples has this problem and most have never had it named. Once it is, the rest of the design follows from it. Ask about your lanai.
Lanai lighting layout
Light outside the screen puts planting and shadow on the far side and keeps every source out of the room. Light inside controls the deck and the seating, but each fixture is now in view and in the mesh. Most enclosures use both, on separate zones, with more of it outside. Point at a number on this lanai.
This is the light that fixes the mirror. Trees and planting lit beyond the screen give the eye something brighter to look at on the far side, so the mesh goes transparent again. The sources are outside the room altogether, so none of them can glare.
A palm or two lit beyond the corner of the cage sets the height of the view and stops the enclosure feeling like a box. Lit from outside, the trunk is seen through the screen and the crown above it.
Inside the cage, light is kept low and at the perimeter. Short shaded fixtures in the planter at the back of the deck light the surface and the planting at their feet, and at this height they sit below the sight line of someone in a chair.
A lit pool is the largest light source on the lanai, and its color sets the mood for everything around it. The deck lighting is balanced against it. With the pool on, most decks need less light than people expect.
The pavers need enough light to see the edge of the pool and any step, and no more. It comes from the low fixtures at the perimeter and from the glow of the water, not from anything overhead aimed down at a wet, reflective floor.
Everything is judged from here. A fixture that looks perfect from the lawn can be a bare lamp from a lounger, and a reflection that is invisible standing up can sit right in the screen at seated height.
Pool light color
Still water doubles any fixture aimed near it, so deck levels are kept low enough that the pool stays dark and reflective between its own lights. The color the pool is showing changes what the deck needs: white water lights the deck by itself, blue gives it very little. Point at a color to see the difference.
White water is the brightest setting and reads as clean and cool. It throws a lot of light up onto the deck and the cage, so the deck fixtures can be turned well down. Warm planting light beside white water looks its warmest.
Blue is the classic and the darkest of the common colors. The water glows but gives little usable light to the deck, so the perimeter fixtures do more of the work. Against blue, warm white on the planting separates cleanly.
Green and aqua are bright and tropical and reflect strongly off a pale deck and the underside of the cage. They are the colors most likely to show in the screen as a reflection, so the planting outside is lifted to compensate.
Dark, still water is a perfect mirror. It reflects the lit palms and the sky, and the lanai feels larger. This is the setting for a quiet evening, and it only works if the deck lights are low enough not to show in the water.
Illustration of a pool in a courtyard. The color shown is the pool's own light; the deck, wall and planting levels are what we set around it.
Sight lines
A lanai is lived in sitting down, so that is where it is checked from: the loungers, the dining chairs, the sliders and the kitchen window. Shielding, mounting height and aim are settled from each seat. A light that looks right from the lawn can be the one in your eyes all evening. Try it on yours tonight.
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Low inside, lit beyond, and nothing in your eye. Lanais that pass this usually just need a look at the fixtures themselves: what salt air and pool water have done to them.
Most of it works. The lines you left unticked point at the fixtures to lower, shield or move outside the cage, or at a zone that wants its own control.
The inside is out-lighting the yard. The usual fix is fewer, lower fixtures inside and the planting beyond the screen lit, set from your own chairs. Ask about your lanai.
This is how we design a lanai: seated, with every source looked for in your eye, in the screen and in the water.
Footing
A pool deck is walked barefoot and wet, so footing comes before effect. The places that need to be read are the pool edge and sun shelf, the steps of a raised spa, and the threshold at the sliders. Each is lit on the surface, from low down, and never by a light in the eye. Point at each.
Beside the pool
A fixture on a Naples lanai sits in salt air and within reach of pool water, splash and the chemistry used to clean the deck. Thin, coated housings pit and flake. Solid brass and copper darken and carry on. Connections matter as much as the fixture, because that is where moisture gets in first.
A coated fixture is protected by its coating. Beside a pool that coating is rinsed with chlorinated or salt-system water, baked dry in the sun and rinsed again. When it lifts at an edge the metal underneath starts to pit, and the staining runs onto the pavers. Solid brass and copper have no coating to lose. They go dark and stay sound.
The first few feet from the water get splashed every time the pool is used. The whole deck gets pressure washed, and the acid used on pavers and tile is hard on metal and on lenses. Where the layout allows, fixtures sit in planters and beds beyond the splash line and above the level a hose reaches. Where a fixture has to be on the deck, it is one built to be rinsed.
On a lanai, the connection behind the fixture fails before the fixture does.
Salt and moisture travel along copper. A connection that is only twisted and taped wicks water into the cable and the fixtures beyond it dim or fail. Every connection is sealed. The cage matters too: when a screen is replaced or a frame repaired, cable at the perimeter gets disturbed, and it is worth having the lighting looked at afterward.
Where the lanai has a grill or a bar, that part has its own needs: task light for the grill and bar under the cage. A spillway, bowl or fountain on the pool is lit differently again: lighting a spillway or fountain from inside the water. And steps on a raised deck are covered under step and tread lights on a raised deck.
Control
The deck, the water and the planting want different levels and different hours, so each is its own zone. The deck is lowest and changes through the evening. The pool is on or off, in whatever color. The planting beyond the screen runs latest, because it is also the view from inside the house.
The lowest level on the lanai, and the one that changes most through an evening: up a little when people are arriving and carrying things, down once everyone is seated. It wants its own dimmable zone for that reason.
The pool light, and any color it has, is switched separately from everything else. Some evenings the pool is the centerpiece. Others it is off, and the dark water is the mirror. Neither should mean changing the deck or the planting.
The last zone on and the last one off. It is what you see through the cage, it is the light that stops the screen acting as a mirror, and it usually runs later than the deck because it is also the view from inside the house.
Who does the work
NightScapes Landscape Lighting has lit pool decks and lanais 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. A lanai is designed from the loungers, with the pool light in mind.
The lanais and pools on this page are NightScapes jobs: a cage on a lake, a courtyard pool lit green, a freeform pool lit blue. We light pool homes across Naples, Marco Island and Bonita Springs, and through Lee and Collier counties.
For how the three zones are divided and dimmed, see putting the deck, the water and the planting on separate zones. For the rest of the property, see a full-property lighting design.
Ask about your lanaiNot only does my house look great, but my back lanai is beautiful at night.
Questions we hear
What kind of light suits a lanai, what survives the coastal climate, whether lighting can be added to a finished cage, whether an existing transformer will do, what color to use, whether it will glare and what a hurricane does to it. These are the questions people ask about a pool enclosure, with our answers.
NightScapes Landscape Lighting Outdoor lighting only, Naples since 1998 Choose a question
Ask us about your lanai. Choose a question, or call and we will answer it on the phone.
Low, warm, shielded light at the edges, and most of the lighting outside the screen. Inside the cage every fixture is in view and reflects in the mesh, so there are few of them and each sits below seated eye level. The planting beyond the screen is lit a little brighter, which is what lets you see through the mesh.
Fixtures built from metals that tolerate salt, with sealed connections. Solid brass and copper darken and carry on where painted and plated finishes pit. Beside a pool there is splash and cleaning chemistry as well as salt air, so fixtures are kept out of the splash line where the layout allows.
Yes. Most of it goes in the planters, the beds and the landscape outside the cage, which can be reached at any time. Cable crosses a paver deck at a joint or along an edge. If the deck or the cage is about to be built or redone, it is easier to plan the runs before the pavers go down.
Often, if it has capacity left and the lanai can be reached from it without overloading a run. We check both. A lanai is also a good candidate for its own zones, so the deck, the water and the planting can be set separately, and that can affect the answer.
Warm white for the deck and the planting, in almost every case. It is comfortable to sit in and it sets off whatever color the pool is showing. Colored light on the planting as well as in the water tends to turn the whole lanai one flat hue. Warm, low and shielded is also the usual approach where insects are a concern.
It should not, and inside a screen cage it is the main thing to get right. Glare on a lanai comes from sources at seated eye level, from reflections in the mesh and from light on a wet deck. Each is designed out by keeping fixtures low, shielding them, and checking the result from the chairs.
Low fixtures in beds and planters are out of the wind and usually come through. What does the damage is debris, flooding and anything that falls on them, and a cage that is rescreened or rebuilt can disturb cable at its edges. After a named storm we check the system before it is run. See our storm damage page.
Free Consultations and Estimates
Tell us about the lanai: the cage, the pool, where you sit and what is planted outside it. We come out, sit where you sit, and explain what changes when the light moves outside the screen.
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