In our past two homes we have had outdoor lighting. Mostly path lighting and a few trees uplighted. I do not care for the lighting of a home's facade. For the trees, we had some specimen trees lit with small spot or flood lights to show the bark of the trees (birch, red bark maple, japanese maple). Like you, I prefer a light hand with the lighting and we enjoyed looking at it from indoors as well as our porch/sunroom. We recently planted 3 large birch trees and plan to uplight those for the same effect.

The best part about landscaping lights is that you don't have to be outside to appreciate them. If placed judiciously you can also glimpse them from inside the house and then enjoy the beauty of your property even when it's dark. Plus they can offer year-round interest. But you're right that they need to be tasteful, luckily no one seems to be installing runway lights these days. Our uplights look like the ones that Jmck posted - barely noticeable, the sidewalk lights are more decorative but still subtle.

We have landscape lighting at both of our places and I love the view it provides. When we moved in here three years ago we installed a new system - uplights and walkway lights. One uplight is near the corner of the house underneath a large crape myrtle and highlights the peeling bark and branches. I can see it from my reading chair in the family room and often find myself glancing through the French doors to enjoy it. The other uplights are a little distance from the house and highlight the trees in the wooded area behind us and there are a few lights focusing on the bluestone patio wall and pathway into the woods. We also have 2 solar uplights that DH bought for the dogwood and the flagpole. The front of the house has wall lanterns by the garage and front door and downlights along the sidewalk. There is only one uplight in the front of the house and that lights a recessed area next to the front door.

The new control units are vastly improved over our previous ones and have built in clocks and timers that account for DST and EST changes and do not need to be reset after a power outage. The new bulbs also last much longer.

Our other place has a wall of windows and double wide doors so the front of the house is primarily glass. The house isn't visible from the road so we did not bother with window treatments. But at night all that glass is just like having a black wall. The exterior lights provide a focal point beyond the windows at night.

It's a large property and we have 3 separate sections but only the one by the house is functional. Ants built a nest in one of the transformers and shorted it out and the bears ripped the other unit out of the ground and squirrels like to chew the insulation. When we re-do it in the spring we'll run the wires through conduit and encase the transformers in something ant and bear proof.

I don't mind black windows at night, since ours are muntined and the only wall of glass is really the DR. You make a good point though, Maire, about being able to enjoy your own landscaping at night. I think I'd like that.

I hear mixed reviews about solar options, WDYT?

We have a few of the solar uplights pictured above. Very inexpensive. I think they were $6 at HomeDepot. They’ve been in use for months and no problems at all. Like others, we have them positioned on interesting trees, bark, etc. and enjoy seeing them from indoors. I’ve found the key to getting good light from solar lighting is to make sure the initial charge is a full 8-10 hours in full sun. I also will only use lights with “warm white” lights. The bright white ones are too much for me. We do use solar lighting in a few places. I especially like one over my garden shed door since electric is not available there.

Why not swap out all for LED?

I have 5 lights around the back of my house that equaled to 500 watts, swapped out the Halogen & Quartz for LED - it's now 70 watts

Also, I'm not changing the bulbs(ladder) once or twice a year.

Gizmo, The floods I will def swap out, esp since many are not working. Other than that, not sure, there are so many. We keep finding more and more.

Maire cate had some great advice. One thing we need to do is replace our controller since ours is ancient by today’s standards, but I digress.

We installed a landscape system because it was dark as cr*p out here when we first built, and we didn’t like driving up to a completely dark house. Over the years we have tweaked both the landscape and the lights, now having all LEDs. The main thing is to pick some features you want to highlight (ours was a Japanese maple and a crape myrtle) plus ensure guests had a safe path to the front door. Nothing wrong with soft path lighting as long as you avoid the runway effect. You can also consider silhouetting an object or trees or shrubs against a wall if you have one, or moonlighting something from above. Magical.

I am not a big fan of wall-washing, but an area like your pond or your hydrangeas could be spectacular with the right technique.

*I’m having trouble posting, this will probably post 3 times or some such!😂

Here‘s ours...basically 3 wall washers on each side of front door, two each on main facade, and one in front of each little wing (I couldn’t get the left one in the frame.) We uplit our huge Natchez crepe myrtle on the far right. That’s it...we didn’t bother putting any in front of our rear-facing garage (behind the crepe myrtle) bc, well, it’s a garage. 😂 We like the lights very much.

I’m not sure we have a picture, but the tree line in our back yard is illuminated every 6 feet or so. The yard in front of it is mostly dark so the effect is distant yet clear, if that makes sense. There is about 1/2 an acre to the tree line.

Nini, That looks absolutely gorgeous. Well done. I don't think we'd light our facade, as our house is not grand and we like to hew to the country feel. But for you it works wonderfully!

Jojoco, yes, that makes sense, and sounds very nice! I think that seems similar to our backyard. We have lawn, then the pond, then on the far side of the pond, several trees are lit. So the lights are usually in the distance. It was all hard wired (term?) over 30 years ago and is in working order for the most part.

We want to replace the (very large and clunky) old fixtures and also get something that is a warmer white. Turns out we can buy something that you just stick in the ground and plug in! So we will give it a try. Meanwhile we have all sorts of uplights and path lights all around the property that probably need bulbs.

Last, not least, we are reworking the entry from the guest parking to the front door, aka The Long March. Is there anything new and exciting in path lighting? (under a gazillion dollars)

Meantime, we have many existing path lights in beds, etc.

I'd estimate we have about, oh... 3,400 or so scattered about. Hard to tell since we never turn them on, and most need bulbs. Speaking of which:

Have you ever seen one uh these?

Where do I get one (or 3,400)?

Our electrician ended up suggesting something very similar to JMCK's post, though ours are line voltage and he suggested keeping it that way. Love the spikes, makes it so easy to play with them. We picked up six and spent last night moving them around. It is comical how much smaller they are than the PO's (which also cast a terribly cold light). They had 14 just along the far side of the pond, and despite my protestations, we will probably end up with a similar amount there too. It's like eating tortilla chips.

Highly recommend playing around with these. (or the low voltage version if you are putting in for the first time)

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Commercial-Electric-Line-Voltage-Bronze-LED-Landscape-Flood-Light-with-Spike-Plug-14W-1100-Lumen-SPKM-14W03/301233079