Would you like to enjoy your trees and property at night?

When thinking about outdoor lighting, you often are wanting to highlight your home’s features. Trees tend to be a lower priority, however, tree lighting can often make a very dramatic difference. Your tree can be transformed into a piece of art with just one light.

There are two major kinds of tree lighting; down lighting and up lighting. Uplighting involves lighting fixtures being placed at ground level so that the light shines up to the tree. This type of lighting is used for showing off the tree’s canopy and interesting branch structures. Downlighting is a type of fixture that is strategically placed in the tree’s canopy that creates a very beautiful moonlight effect on the ground below and the tree’s branching structure.

By manipulating the fixture’s angle, the Kelvin temperature color and spread of the source light allows you to create interesting shadows, silhouettes or highlights on the ground cover or turf below, as well as walls, plants, and walkways. Great care needs to be given to your down lighting in order to protect the health of the tree over the long term. It is rarely done properly, so we highly recommend that you use a qualified professional to do this work.

Down Lighting and Up Lighting Work Together

One of landscape lighting’s more creative areas involves lighting trees using both uplighting and downlighting. They work together in order to showcase your trees, particularly the beautiful majestic oaks in San Antonio as well as the surrounding Hill Country. It creates a magical moonlighting effect by placing multiple fixtures in such a way that it shines down into and through the leaves and branches below to create a flowing, moving shadow as well as the light art below. When done properly, it has the feeling of a bright full moon that is shining through the leaves that are above which on the ground leaves a dappled moonlight. The tree is shown off by using the up light. The best results are produced by using the two together.

How to Care for your Trees

Often our customers are concerned about having lights mounted in their trees. Trees are treated like trees by us, and not buildings. We only install lights in trees that we know are able to support them. The Gurus uses specialty stainless steel tree bolts to prevent them from rusting or causing future damage or disease. A professional never will put staples in your trees, since that will ruin the tree and wire eventually and maybe a fire hazard as well.

A professional will also never surface mount any junction box onto a tree which creates a rot spot in the tree which invites ants as well as other pests into a tree. We hide cables on the tree’s non-visible side so you won’t even know that it is there. Our materials and methods are designed to protect your lights and trees. We are available to come when needed in order to adjust the bolts and screws as your tree grows as part of your annual service agreement with us.

 If you would like to discover more tips and tricks from Robert Huff Illuminations; visit our blog. Call or contact us today for more information!