How Outdoor Lighting Can Improve Safety Around Your Campbell River Home

Around most homes, a few spots matter most after dark: the front steps, the path to the door, the deck stairs and the driveway. Here on the coast those surfaces are wet for much of the year, and in winter you’re often walking on them after dark. Lighting them well is one of the simplest ways to make getting around your property safer. It also makes your house less appealing to anyone who would rather not be seen.

Below are the spots worth lighting first, and the products we use for each one.

Start with the steps and stairs

Stairs are where a missed step matters most, so start there. Light each tread so you can see the edge and depth of every step, and make sure the landings at the top and bottom are lit as well.

Deck lights are made for this. Gemstone’s deck lights are small LED lights set into stair treads and risers, and they sit flush with the boards, so there’s nothing to catch a toe or a snow shovel. On treads that get a lot of traffic, an optional recessed spacer sets the lens just below its metal ring. Gemstone says this helps protect it from boots, furniture and shovels.

You can choose clear caps, which give a brighter point of light, or frosted caps, which spread the light into a softer glow. If you’ll be looking straight down at them on the stairs, frosted caps are gentler on the eyes. The same lights can go into deck boards, posts and walkways, so you can also mark the edge of a deck or a change in level.

Make paths and driveways easy to see

On a wet night a path can look like one dark, shiny strip. What you want is even light along the whole route, without bright patches next to deep shadows and without anything shining into your eyes. With even light you’ll spot wet leaves, a patch of ice or a garden hose before you’re standing on it.

For paths, driveways and yards we use Gemstone’s landscape and flood lights. Gemstone rates them at up to 810 lumens each and says that’s bright enough for security lighting as well as accent lighting. We aim each light during installation, so it can point along a path or down a sloped driveway instead of into a window or across the street. The lights are staked into the ground and the wiring is buried, which leaves no cords across the lawn to trip over.

If your driveway slopes or curves, light the whole length of it, including the stretch out by the road. Gemstone says these lights are built for freezing temperatures and heavy rain, and the lights come with a 5-year warranty, with 10 years on the other parts.

Light the front door and entry

Your front entry should be bright enough that you can find your keys and see who’s at the door. A lit entry also helps guests and delivery drivers find the right house, and it means a package left on the step isn’t sitting in the dark.

Permanent roofline lights do a lot of this work. Gemstone’s lights sit in a track under the soffit and shine downward, so they light the face of the house, the porch and the entry. People often know them for holiday colours, but every light also has its own warm white diode. For everyday use you can run them in warm white or turn them up to a brighter white. Gemstone lists a range from 2800K, a soft yellowish white, up to 7000K, a crisp daylight white.

In the daytime the track is colour-matched to your trim and is hard to spot. Gemstone gives the roofline lights a lifetime warranty and covers the other parts for 10 years. You can read the details on our warranty page.

Fewer dark corners around the house

One evening, walk around your house and look for the places you can’t see into from a window or the street. Common ones are side yards, gates, the corner behind the garage and the space behind a large hedge. Someone standing there can’t be seen, and people who are up to no good generally prefer it that way.

Landscape lights aimed along a fence line or up the side of the house work well for these spots. If you have security cameras, the extra light also helps them record a clearer picture at night. A lit back yard lets you see whether a deer or a bear is near the garbage bins before you step outside, too.

For the back patio, deck or pergola, patio string lights give you enough light to see the steps down to the yard on summer evenings. Gemstone says each bulb is built to handle freezing temperatures and strong winds. The patio lights have a 5-year warranty on the lights and 10 years on the other parts.

Let a timer turn them on for you

Lights only help when they’re on, and a switch by the door is easy to forget. With the Gemstone Lights app you can set your lights to come on at sunset and turn off at sunrise or at a time you choose. You can add an offset if you’d like them on a little before sunset. Because the timer follows sunset through the year, you never come home to a dark house, whether it’s June or December. Gemstone says these timers keep working even if the system goes offline.

You can also control your lights from your phone when you’re away, so if you’re gone for a week the lights still come on each evening and you can change them from wherever you are. If you’d rather use your voice, the system works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, and it connects with Control4. If your home Wi-Fi drops, Gemstone says the lights can still be run over a local Bluetooth connection.

The app also lets you split your lights into zones. For example, the front path and the roofline can run on separate timers, so the path stays lit later than the rest of the house.

Keep the light comfortable for you and your neighbours

More light isn’t always better. A light that’s too bright, or pointed the wrong way, causes glare, and glare makes it harder to see into the shadows beside it. Gemstone’s lights can be dimmed anywhere from 0 to 100 percent, so you can set each zone to the level that lets you see clearly without squinting.

Warm white is the most comfortable choice for everyday evenings. Bright white is useful when you need to see more detail, such as when you’re shovelling the driveway or carrying groceries in on a dark night. Gemstone describes its roofline lighting as a low-voltage, downward light that shouldn’t bother nearby homes, and aiming landscape lights carefully keeps light out of your neighbour’s windows.

Where to start

You don’t have to light everything at once. Pick the route you use every night, which is usually the walk from the driveway to the front door, and light that first. Gemstone says you can install the front and back of your home at different times, and all of its products run from the same app. That means the deck stairs or the back yard can be added later without a second system to learn.

If you’d like help deciding which parts of your property to light first, call LK Installations at (250) 203-3266 or request a free quote. Tell us which spots worry you most after dark, and we’ll suggest lighting to suit them.