Design and installation
Water does not light the way stone does. Aim a fixture at it from the garden and the beam goes straight through. Water shows light only when the light is in it, behind it, or reflected off it.
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If the fountain disappears after dark
If your fountain is the centerpiece by day and a dark shape by night, with lit planting all around it, the lights are aimed at the water from outside. Light from the garden lights the stone and passes through the water. Water shows light only when the source is in it, behind it, or reflected in it.
Lit from the garden. The beam lights the stone and passes straight through the falling water. A few drops sparkle; the water itself stays dark. This is the fountain that disappears at night.
Clear water is nearly transparent to a beam that hits it from the side. The light enters, crosses and leaves, and almost none of it comes back to your eye. That is why a fountain surrounded by good landscape lighting can still be the one dark thing in the courtyard.
Put the same light underneath, shining up through the falling water, and everything changes. Every drop and ripple becomes a small lens, and the water glows. Or light the wall behind it and let the water stand out as a shape. Or light the far bank of a pond and let the surface mirror it. Those are the three ways water takes light, and the rest of this page is about choosing between them.
The right one depends on the feature: a tiered fountain in a motor court, a rock fall into a pond and a spillway into a pool are three different jobs. Ask about your water feature.
Fountain lighting positions
A water feature can be lit from inside the water, from behind it or from across it. Inside gives the glow and asks for cleaning. Behind gives a silhouette and nothing to maintain in the water. Across lights the stone and the spray and is the easiest to service. Most features use two. Point at a number to try each.
A submerged fixture aimed up through the water lights it from within. Every ripple, jet and falling sheet above it catches light, and the water becomes the brightest thing in the court. This is what most people mean when they say they want the fountain lit.
Light something behind the feature, a wall or a doorway, and leave the water itself unlit. The fountain is seen as a dark outline with bright edges where the falling water catches the light from behind. It is quiet, and there is nothing in the water to maintain.
A fixture in the planting beside the feature, aimed across it, lights the stone and catches the spray. It is the easiest to install and service, because nothing is wet. It lights the structure well and the water only where the water is broken into drops.
Most features are best with light inside the water and a softer light on what stands behind or beside them. The submerged fixture does the glow; the second source gives the feature a setting and keeps it from floating in a black court.
Illustration of a fountain in a motor court. Levels are exaggerated a little so each position reads on a screen.
How water takes light
Turbulent water scatters light and reads as bright: a fall, a jet or a bubbler lit from below glows. A still pond does the opposite. It reflects whatever is lit beyond it and shows any submerged source as a hot spot. So moving water is lit from within, and still water is lit by its far bank.
Water that is broken up, by a fall, a jet or a bubbler, is full of surfaces at every angle. Light from below is scattered by all of them, so turbulent water reads as bright, white and alive. The more the water moves, the more light it will hold, and the less of it you need.
A still pond or a quiet basin does not show light that is aimed into it. It shows a reflection of whatever is lit on the far side. So a still pond is lit by lighting its far bank: the planting, a tree, a wall. The water repeats it, upside down, at no extra effort.
Put a fixture under still, clear water and aim it up, and from the bank you see the lamp itself as a bright disk. It needs movement above it, a hiding place among rock, or an aim away from the viewing side. In a still basin, less light from further away nearly always looks better.
Fountain lighting
Each kind of fountain puts its water in a different place, so the fixture goes somewhere different. A tiered fountain is lit from its lowest basin. A bubbler is lit from directly beneath or grazed from beside. A wall spout is lit from its trough, and a spillway bowl from under its lip. All are checked from where they are seen. Choose one to light it.
Drawings, not to scale. The amber dot is the fixture; the glow is the water it lights.
Waterfall lighting
A waterfall can be lit from behind the sheet, at the splash point or by grazing the stone beside it. Behind the sheet makes the water a glowing curtain. At the splash point lights the foam and the mist. Grazing the rock shows the structure. A spillway into a pool is lit from under its lip.
Where water falls clear of the rock in a sheet, there is a pocket of air behind it. A fixture tucked into that pocket and aimed outward lights the back of the sheet, and the whole fall becomes a curtain of light with the source completely hidden. It is the most striking way to light a fall and it needs a fall that is built for it: enough of a ledge to stand a fixture on, and a sheet that stays intact.
The foot of a fall is all foam and spray. A submerged fixture there, aimed up, lights the most broken water on the feature, and the light climbs the fall as far as the water is turbulent. This works on almost any waterfall, including rock falls with no clean sheet, and it is the usual starting point.
A fixture low at the side, aimed along the face of the rock, shows every ledge and shadow and makes wet stone glisten. It lights the structure more than the water, and it is the one position that needs nothing in the pond. Used with a light at the splash point, it gives a fall both its form and its movement.
Light the water where it is broken, and the stone where it is wet.
A spillway bowl or a sheer descent from a raised wall into a pool is a small waterfall with a pool for a basin. It is lit from under the lip or from the wall behind the sheet, so the falling water is drawn as a bright line against the tile. The deck and the screen around it follow different rules, covered under the pool deck and the screen enclosure around it. The same thinking applies below a dock, with salt water and tide added: underwater lights on a canal dock.
Pond lighting
A pond is lit at low levels, in warm color, with any fixture hidden among rock and aimed away from the side it is viewed from. Most of the light goes on the far bank, where the planting is, and the surface repeats it. Where there are fish, the pond is given dark hours every night.
Stand where you look at the pond from. What you see in the water is the opposite bank. Light a tree, a clump of grasses or a rock outcrop over there and it appears twice, once for real and once in the surface. Nothing is submerged, nothing needs cleaning, and the water stays dark and reflective. For the planting itself, see lighting the beds that frame a pond.
Under a fall that feeds the pond, behind a boulder, or beneath a stand of water plants so their stems and leaves are lit from below. In each case there is something above the fixture to catch the light and something beside it to hide the lamp. In open, still water there is neither.
Common practice for a pond with fish is to keep output low and color warm, aim away from the places the fish shelter, and run the lights on a schedule that gives them darkness for part of every night. We work that way. If the pond holds koi or other fish that are looked after by someone, that person is worth asking too.
Keeping it bright
Fountain and pond water leaves minerals on everything, and a warm lit lens grows algae. Both dim a submerged light within a season. No fixture is immune, so every one we set can be lifted out and wiped without draining the feature, with slack in its cable and a route that survives pump service.
That cleaning is part of scheduled lens cleaning and re-aiming. If a light has gone dim or dark altogether, start with tracking down a fixture that has gone dim or dark.
Ask about your water featureSubmerged fixturesNightScapes Landscape Lighting
If it cannot be reached, it will not be cleaned.
Who does the work
NightScapes Landscape Lighting has lit fountains, ponds and waterfalls 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. Water is lit for the view from where you see it, whether that is the front door, the lanai or the drive.
The photographs on this page are NightScapes jobs: a carved wall fountain lit from its basin, a tiled wall fountain in a courtyard, a rock grotto spa, a pool before a bamboo screen and a rock waterfall under a coconut palm. We light water features across Naples, Marco Island and Bonita Springs, and through Lee and Collier counties.
Water lighting is a small part of most systems and the part people look at most. We would sooner set one fixture in the right place than four in the easy ones.
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Questions we hear
Whether underwater lights can go near a fall, how a fixture is held at its base, how many a pond needs, which kind to use, whether they affect fish, whether the feature can be dimmed and how to stop lenses clouding. These are the questions owners of fountains and ponds ask, with the answers we give.
NightScapes Landscape Lighting Outdoor lighting only, Naples since 1998 Choose a question
Ask us about your fountain or pond. Choose a question, or call and we will answer it on the phone.
Yes, and that is the best place for them. A fixture at the foot of a fall or under a jet has broken water above it, which catches and scatters the light. The fixture must be one made to be submerged, set where it can be lifted out for cleaning, and aimed so the lamp is not seen from where people sit.
It depends on what the base is made of and whether the feature can be drained. The fixture needs to stay put under moving water and still come out for cleaning, so it is held by a weighted base or a bracket and left with slack in the cable. We look at how the feature is built before choosing how to hold a light in it.
Fewer than you might think. One fixture under a jet or a fall lights a great deal of moving water. A still pond may want none in the water at all, and light on the far bank instead. We start with one fixture and add only where something that should be seen is not.
Ones built for permanent submersion, in a metal that suits the water, with a sealed lens and a sealed cable entry. Warm white suits most stone and most planting around a feature. Low output is usually right, because water is seen against darkness and a little light in it shows clearly.
Common practice for a pond with fish is low output, warm color, light aimed away from where the fish shelter, and a schedule that gives them dark hours every night. If the pond is stocked with fish you care about, tell us, and ask whoever looks after them as well. We will light the far bank before we light the water.
Yes, and it should be on its own zone so it can be. A fountain that looks right at dusk can be too bright at midnight, when everything around it has been turned down. Being able to set the water separately from the garden is most of what makes it look good all evening.
Cleaning. Fountain water leaves minerals on everything it touches and a warm, lit lens grows algae. No fixture is immune. What can be designed is how easy the fixture is to reach and wipe, which decides whether it gets done. That is why every submerged light we set can be lifted out.
Free Consultations and Estimates
Tell us what the feature is, whether the water moves, and where you see it from. We look at it with you and plan each position before anything is fixed.
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