Permanent Lighting for Backyard Patios and Decks in Campbell River

Summer evenings on the coast run late, and a good backyard gets used well past sunset if the lighting is right. The trouble is that most backyards are lit by one bright fixture by the back door. It’s either glaring or nothing.

Permanent lights let you light a patio and deck the way you’d light a room inside: soft light where you sit, enough light on the steps to get around safely, and a few accents in the garden. Here’s how to put it together with the Gemstone Lights products we install.

Over the table: patio string lights

String lights are the easiest way to make a patio feel like a place to stay. Gemstone’s patio string lights are smart LED bulbs on weather-sealed runs, planned and installed to fit your space with no cutting or splicing. Gemstone lists pergolas, patios, posts and open areas as places to hang them.

Every bulb can be set on its own and has a dedicated warm white diode as well as colour. For dinner outside, a low warm white works well. When people come over, you can bring the brightness up or switch to colour.

A few things to plan for:

• What you’ll hang them from. Beams on a pergola or covered patio are ideal. In an open yard, posts can carry the runs.
• Where you sit. Keep the brightest light over the table and let it fall off toward the edges of the yard.
• The view. If you look out over the water or the trees, keep the lights high and out of your line of sight.

Underfoot: deck and stair lights

Steps are where people trip, especially when the boards are wet. Gemstone’s deck and stair lights are small LED lights set into deck boards, stair treads and risers, posts and walkways. They sit flush with the surface inside a metal deck ring, so there’s nothing to catch a foot. On busy stairs, an optional recessed spacer keeps the lens just below the ring.

You can choose the ring in black, gunmetal or silver to suit your decking or railings, and clear caps for crisp points of light or frosted caps for a softer glow. A light in every step down to the yard makes the route obvious without lighting up the whole deck.

Beyond the deck: landscape lights

A little light out in the yard makes the space feel bigger after dark. Gemstone’s landscape lights give up to 810 lumens each and are aimed by hand during the install, so they can pick out a tree, a garden bed or a fence line. The wiring is buried. See landscape lighting and flood lights for more.

Make it all work together

The best part is that all of this runs from one app, alongside the permanent outdoor lights on the house. A few ways to use that:

• Set the patio, deck and yard to come on at sunset in warm white, on the same timer as the house.
• Group them into zones, so you can dim the deck while the patio stays bright.
• Match the backyard to the house for a holiday, or give it its own colour for a party.

Adding to a system later

You don’t have to do the backyard at the same time as the house. Patio and deck lights both work with an existing Gemstone Lights system, so the backyard can come a season later. If you’re planning new landscaping or a new deck, though, it’s easier to plan the lights before the work starts.