Lighting up stones - advice needed

[pihta]

Hi guys

We have customer with house near water. House located above the water level and territory have several retaining walls down to water made from "wild" stones. His landscape designer decided to do not put anything on the lawn between house and water - to make view to water from house clear and to make house visible from water. Sow there will be no trees, plants and so on - only stones and grass.

So the main question is - how to light up this landscape (house will be lit too)? We need somehow light up the grass, stones and walkways.

Now I decided to put path lights on both sides of from steps in walls, may be some tall area lights 60 ft or so near fence. And put a lot of little wall washers like stellars or starburst on this stones.

This well be looking good then looking from water - lighted rows of stones and a house above. But from the house I afraid that territory will be dark - you dont see stones and grass...

So if you guys did something like this - give advice - what can I do else with this?

Thanks!

[emby]

Egor,

Nice looking property.

Besides Path Lights down those walkways, and maybe lighting up those trees down by the water I would not illuminate the stones and grass area.

I would focus on the house as my focal point and include those trees that are close to the house. As far as the path lights go, I would choose a product that would have a very large beam spread (11" top hat at least) so that the light spills a little bit onto the rocks and turf along the pathway.

INMO I really do not like the look of those stones so I would not incorporate them into my lighting scene.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Ken

[pihta]

Thanks Ken

Absolutely I will lite up this tree near water, also there will be some patio so I'll uplight the tree and downlight from it to the patio. Trees near house too, of course.

But I need to do something with this stones because customer put a lot of money to bring them here (from caucasus, 1000+ kms) so I think he will be sad if I dont accent them somehow

I think that landscape designer wants to make some mountain style landscape...

And yes, there will be some boat dock, 90% wooden and we will light it too, and the water... but rocks?!

[JoeyD]

I am stumped!!! LOL Besides using area lights and or Stellars I am not sure anything will look really good and or not create glare while lighting those rocks.

Look to the Centaurus 12 for your area lights. They have a 12" top on a 24" stem! They will give you plenty of beam spread!! http://www.uniquelighting.com/produc...ENTAURUS12.htm

Great property, I am sure you will do a great job!!!

[pihta]

Thanks Joey!

I see wide-hat path lights will do the job.

[Pro-Scapes]

No idea what kind of plants you have there but I can tell you if I was the landscape designer on this project I would still do some small beds in front of the stones and not just turf.

Just area lights planted in the gaps of the stone might look kind of repeatative(at least for my taste) Some low profile beds might really help delineate the project. It should be kept subtle as that home is a great focal point in itself.

[JoeyD]

Egor, curious, what does a home like that cost in Russia? Any idea what it would be in US dollars?

[INTEGRA Bespoke Lighting]

Igor, I am with Ken 100%. Light the house, the paths where the steps are and any principal trees. Those retaining walls will look a bit much if you highlight them in any way, especially from the water.

Less is more!

Regards

[pihta]

Thank you all guys

I think that I'll put several Stellars to lit stones, may be near path and steps and some large stones.... I agree that overlit stone walls will look to bright from the water. So I'll lit them carefully.

Joey, I dont know exactly how it cost. Today all prices for houses are different because of a crisis , low money movement etc. Before crisis I think that house like that, already built (this is built by customer) may cost around $2m. This is for house. How many land costs I dont know. This lake is about 100km from Moscow, which is a bit far away to drive every day to work and back. This is vacation house, customer have several houses near Moscow. Land at this distance is around $20 per sq.m, depends on many factors. But this house is sitting really near water - this is unsual. There is nature-saving federal law that no private constructions can be built near 100m from water - this is federal territory. People can rent this land - but the process is very complicated and expensive. So I think this land is more expensive than others.

[Pro-Scapes]

That doesnt look very big for 2 million at least in my part of the country. There is a home here for sale at 6.5M now that is about 8k sq ft on 97 acres with 3 private stocked fishing ponds

A nice home on a good sized community lake that you can fish or ski in for a 4-5k sq ft home in good condition can be had in the upper 800k to 1.5m range on 2 manicurured acres.