Your Home Exterior Lighting Guide

From your cozy front patio to your lush back garden, many spots around your home deserve to shine day and night. With the right exterior lighting, you can show off your favorite outdoor features around the clock — while also improving your home’s safety and security.

Read our guide to learn more about how outdoor lighting enhances your home and discover how the different types of lighting can help you achieve your style and security goals.

Benefits of Outdoor Lighting for Your Home

Outdoor lighting is a simple upgrade that can have a major impact on your home. Here’s what you can get with a little extra illumination:

Increased Safety

When you’re enjoying a cool autumn evening on the patio or arriving home from a late-night gathering, outdoor lighting can help you move around and get inside safely. You can spot and avoid toys, cords, steps, and other tripping hazards you may have missed in the dark. Plus, guests who aren’t familiar with your home will be able to find it more easily from the street when they arrive at night, and they’ll have a clear path inside.

Elevated Curb Appeal

Whether you’re trying to impress potential buyers or neighbors taking an evening walk, lighting can help your home look warm and inviting at any hour. It also helps show off your home’s best features after dark, from immaculate landscaping to your newly refreshed entryway.

Added Security

Outdoor lighting helps brighten blind spots around your home, allowing you and your neighbors to spot unusual activity after dark — and signaling to uninvited visitors that they can’t move around unseen.

Motion-activated lighting can be especially helpful in illuminating areas you want to protect, like driveways and entrances. When movement is detected, they automatically shine, so you can add extra security without keeping bright lights on 24/7.

Enhanced Aesthetic

Outdoor lighting isn’t just practical; it’s also a design tool that can add to your home’s aesthetic. From subtle, dim lighting that adds warmth to bright lighting and sleek fixtures that complement clean lines, there are options that fit any style.

Types of Outdoor Lighting

There’s more to exterior lighting than a few fixtures by your front door and garage. These outdoor lights serve many different purposes around your property:

Floodlights

Floodlights are bright, motion-activated security lights that help to illuminate large outdoor areas like yards and driveways when someone (or something) moves past. In addition to alerting uninvited visitors, floodlights can help light up a path for you or your visitors at night.

Homeowners often use floodlights to enhance safety and security, not ambiance. But with a customizable option like Ring’s Floodlight and a Ring Bridge, sold separately, you can level up security without sacrificing style. From the Ring App, you can turn on your Floodlight and adjust the brightness. That means you can light up the driveway for guests and add soft lighting in the backyard for a few hours during a fall bonfire.

Spotlights

Similar to floodlights, spotlights shine when motion is detected, but they offer a smaller, more focused beam of light for back doors, porches, patios, and sheds. With a Ring Spotlight and Bridge, sold separately, you also have the option to keep an area lit to add drama or improve safety with adjustable brightness settings.

Steplights

Stairs can be tricky to navigate in the dark, but steplights help illuminate each step to increase visibility. When connected to a Ring Bridge, sold separately, you can turn on motion activation for Ring Steplights or keep them on at certain times.

Pathlights

These small fixtures sit in the ground and brighten paths around your home, including walkways and driveways. When motion detection is activated, Ring Pathlights automatically turn on to help you and your guests walk around safely after dark. But with a Ring Bridge, sold separately, you can also keep them lit to show off your landscaping and adjust the brightness to match your home’s aesthetic.

Wall Lights

Wall lights are an excellent addition when you need a little extra light on garages, fences, and outdoor walls to help you enjoy your outdoor space in the evening. Compared to Floodlights, which have ultra-bright LEDs for peak visibility, Ring’s Wall Lights offer softer, more atmospheric lighting with a sleek design that helps blend into your home.

How to Choose the Right Home Exterior Lighting

If you’re looking for the right combination of security and landscape lighting to elevate your home, follow these simple steps:

Walk Your Property

Walking around your home after dark can help you identify spots that need extra light. Look for areas you’d like to help keep secure, like entryways, garages, and sheds, to determine how many Spotlights and Floodlights you might need. Then, consider if any fences or exterior walls along patios or decks could use softer lighting for entertaining or ambiance, which can help you decide how many Wall Lights to buy.

Pathlights work best when placed five to seven feet apart. Measure along your pathways, driveway, and any other places you want extra lighting along the ground to see how many you might need to illuminate your outdoor space. Finally, see if any steps might need additional brightness from Steplights to help improve safety and visibility.

Consider Your Power Sources

For most outdoor lighting options, you can choose between different power sources, depending on what works best for your home. In areas with existing wiring, such as above your garage or back door, you can install a hardwired option like Floodlight Wired for consistent power. You can also choose a Floodlight Battery or Spotlight Battery to add security lighting in spots without available electrical.

Solar options are also available for spots that get direct sunlight during the day. Your Wall Lights, Steplights, and Pathlights can charge while the sun is out and use that energy to keep things bright at night. If you need lighting in shady areas, consider battery-powered options.

Determine Desired Features

There are a variety of exterior lighting options on the market with different features, ranging from traditional lights you turn on manually to smart fixtures with auto-on capabilities, lighting schedules, and automations. Some options may also require professional installation, whereas many are DIY-friendly. Determine which features are most important to you and what will work with your budget.

Ring has smart lighting options to fit any budget, with innovative features you can unlock with a Ring Bridge. Whether you want your lights to turn on only when motion is detected or connect your lights with security cameras and video doorbells to strengthen and automate security, you can customize your lighting to fit your goals.

Bring Your Smart Home Outdoors With Ring

Smart lighting from Ring doesn’t just help improve safety, security, and curb appeal around your home — it can also help make your life easier. With a Ring Bridge, you can control everything from brightness to motion sensitivity from the Ring App and set schedules to help ensure your home is lit up when you arrive. You can also program all your lights to turn on when one gets triggered and even set your security cameras to begin recording automatically.

Explore your smart lighting options today to see how Ring can help you expand your smart home outdoors and create a whole-home security system.

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