Garden Lighting Design Ideas and Night Time Garden Photos

The layers, colour temperatures and hidden fittings that turn a garden into a night time room — and the mistakes that make it look like a car park. Garden lighting is the cheapest way to double the value of a garden, because it creates a second garden that only exists after dark. The principle that separates good schemes from bad is simple and absolute: light the object, never the viewer. If you can see the lamp, the fitting is in the wrong place. Every fixture should be hidden in planting, buried in gravel, recessed into a step or concealed behind a lip. Work in layers rather than fittings. A low path layer for safe movement, an accent layer washing up tree trunks and grazing textured walls, a functional layer over the barbecue and dining table, and a feature layer inside water or under a canopy. Aim for pools of light with darkness between them; a garden lit evenly is a garden with no atmosphere at all. Three quarters of the garden should stay dark. Colour temperature and control finish the job. Warm white around 2700 kelvin flatters skin, timber, stone and green foliage; cooler light makes planting look grey and...

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Pool Designs

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging and Pool-Side Pergola Dining Area

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging, Timber Deck Inserts and Sandy Beach Entry, Mass-Planted Agapanthus, Palms and Soft. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com — Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging, Timber Deck Inserts and Sandy Beach Entry, Mass-Planted Agapanthus, Palms and Soft Coastal Grasses, featuring a Pool-Side Pergola Dining Area and Firepit Lounge, with Considered Outdoor Zoning and Soft Layered Textures

Pc 05 is part of our Pool Designs collection — one of 97 large-format widescreen concept visuals in this section. It is presented here at full size so you can study the layout, the planting, the surfaces and the way light falls across the design before you commit to building anything on your own block.

Infinity, lagoon, plunge and lap pools with surrounds, surfaces and pool-side living. Use this concept as a starting point: note the proportions between built form and greenery, where shade and shelter sit, how paths and paved areas move people through the space, and which materials repeat to hold the whole scheme together.

Every visual on this site is a design idea created for Home Design Photos. Browse the rest of the Pool Designs collection, or open the complete image catalogue to see every home, garden, pool, pergola, furniture, lighting and beach house concept in one place.

← Modern Infinity Edge Pool Design with Deep Navy Tiling and Wide Sun Deck, Umbrella Modern Infinity Edge Pool Design with Deep Navy Tiling and Wide Sun Deck, Umbrella →

More Pool Designs concepts

Lagoon-Style Swimming Pool Design with Charcoal Pebble Interior and Sun Lounge Terrace, Shaded Cabana

Lagoon-Style Swimming Pool Design with Charcoal Pebble Interior, Bluestone Coping and Blackbutt Decking, Cycads, Strappy Foliage and Uplit Feature Trees, featuring a Sun Lounge Terrace, Shaded Cabana and Outdoor Shower, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats and Relaxed Family

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging and Pool-Side Pergola Dining Area

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging, Timber Deck Inserts and Sandy Beach Entry, Mass-Planted Agapanthus, Palms and Soft Coastal Grasses, featuring a Pool-Side Pergola Dining Area and Firepit Lounge, with Considered Outdoor Zoning and Soft Layered Textures

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling, Travertine Coping and Frameless Glass Fencing, Clipped Hedging, Feature Olive. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling and Waterfall Wall, Stepping

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling, Travertine Coping and Frameless Glass Fencing, Clipped Hedging, Feature Olive Trees and Silver Groundcovers, featuring a Waterfall Wall, Stepping Pads and Evening LED Glow

Resort-Style Swimming Pool Design with Pale Sandstone Surrounds and Swim-Up Bench, Spa Spill

Resort-Style Swimming Pool Design with Pale Sandstone Surrounds, White Rendered Walls and Bronze Fittings, Layered Ferns, Elephant Ears and Lush Poolside Greenery, featuring a Swim-Up Bench, Spa Spill and Poolside BBQ Kitchen, complemented by Durable Weatherproof Finishes and Low-Maintenance

Resort-Style Swimming Pool Design with Pale Sandstone Surrounds and Swim-Up Bench, Spa Spill

Complete image catalogue

Retaining Wall and Terraced Garden Design Ideas and Photos

How to turn a sloping block into usable garden rooms — wall types, drainage, step proportions, planting and the levels that make terraces work.

A sloping block is not a problem, it is an opportunity most flat gardens never get: distinct outdoor rooms at different heights, long views across the garden, and a natural excuse for water to move. What ruins sloping gardens is treating the slope as a single continuous fall. Terracing it into two or three level platforms, each with a purpose, transforms an unusable hill into the most interesting garden on the street.

Choose the wall type for the height and the look. Sleeper walls in hardwood or steel and timber suit low terraces up to around a metre and cost the least. Concrete block walls with a rendered or stone clad face handle greater heights and look permanent. Dry stone and gabion walls plant beautifully and drain themselves. Anything over about a metre, or supporting a driveway or structure, needs engineering and usually council approval — treat that as a given rather than a surprise.

Drainage is the reason walls fail. Every retaining wall needs free draining gravel behind it, a subsoil drain at the base wrapped in geotextile, an outlet that actually goes somewhere, and weep holes or a permeable face. Water trapped behind a wall exerts enormous pressure, and no amount of steel compensates for a blocked drain. Build the drainage before the facing material, because it is the part you can never fix later without demolition.

Landscape Design design ideas photo from the Retaining Wall and Terraced Garden Design Ideas and Photos feature. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Then make the levels pleasant to use. Steps in generous flights with consistent risers around 150 millimetres and treads at least 350 deep, landings where the flight changes direction, and a handrail or wall at the edge of any drop. Plant to soften the wall faces with trailing groundcovers and grasses, light the underside of each tread so the terraces read as layers after dark, and give every platform a reason to exist — a table, a lawn, a pool, a productive bed.

House Design Photos is a HUGE Library Gallery and Directory of Home Design Photos

Garden Lighting Design Ideas and Night Time Garden Photos

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging and Pool-Side Pergola Dining Area

More Pool Designs concepts

Retaining Wall and Terraced Garden Design Ideas and Photos