How to Place Up-Lights in Your Yard

Featured Pro: Carter Oosterhouse
Category: Home Décor
Time: 2:20


CARTER OOSTERHOUSE: Hey, I’m Carter Oosterhouse here to shed some light on a great project. Welcome to your GMC Trade Secret, brought to you by the GMC Acadia.

Now, up-lights in your yard add ambience to your home after the sun goes down. So to design your landscape lighting, you want to start by choosing a few features of your house or your yard that you want to showcase, and then plan on how many lights you want to use.

Now, solar-powered lights like this one, they’re so easy to install. All you have to do is plant them in the ground and then you’re done. Now, they’re perfect for accent lighting, to light up, like, these bushes right here. But they really don’t have enough power to illuminate a really big object like this olive tree behind me. So for that, I’ll have to use electrical lights.

So start planning where you want to place the up-lights by taking a high-powered flashlight at night and placing it at the base of the areas that you want to illuminate. Now, use a flashlight with an adjustable beam to experiment with a broad sweep of light to flood that area, or you could use a narrower spotlight to accentuate one detail of your home, or even your yard. Once you know where you want to light, mark that area with a sprinkler flag.

Some up-light kits come with different-colored lenses. Now, different colors of light can create an interesting effect for a lighting scheme. And it’s not a bad idea to sketch out your yard and plot where you want your up-lights to go.

Now, there are a number of different effects that you can accomplish with up-lights. A row of lights along your home creates a wall of light, or a single light behind a bush can create a subtle glow. Now, remember, you want to see the effect and not the fixture, so try to hide your up-lights behind low bushes or other landscaping features.

Now, not all lights have to be placed on the ground. Some can either be on risers or some can even be up in a tree. You might have to modify the light a little bit. But the hardware should be at the store, right next to the lights.

Now, this tree has a lot of limbs, so I think this light would look really good right up here. This looks great. Every light accentuates a certain area on the tree, on the bushes, even that tree in the back behind the car. So don’t be afraid to add some lights to your own yard to keep your home looking great after the sun goes down.

I’m Carter Oosterhouse, and this is another GMC Trade Secret, brought to you by the GMC Acadia.