Most houses get their outdoor lighting one fixture at a time. A builder puts a lantern by the front door, someone adds a floodlight over the garage, and years later a string of solar stakes shows up along the walk. Each piece made sense on its own day. Together they rarely look planned.
This guide treats the outside of a house as one lighting design. It breaks that design into layers, explains how the common building materials around Middle Tennessee react to light, covers glare and aiming so the result is pleasant for the people next door, and ends with sample plans for four kinds of homes. Nothing here depends on a particular product or installer. You can use it with fixtures from any store, a lighting contractor, or a weekend of your own work.
Roofline: light that traces the eaves and gables, outlining the shape of the house from the street.
Uplighting: fixtures on the ground aimed up at walls, columns, chimneys or trees.
Path: low lights along walks and steps, for footing more than for looks.
Porch and entry: the light at the door, the one most homes already have.
Accent: small, targeted pieces such as a lit house number, a single tree, a garden wall or a water feature.
Few homes need all five. Most look better with two or three done well than with five done halfway.
Start with Lighting layers to decide which layers your house actually needs. Read Materials and how they take light before buying anything, because the same fixture can flatter red brick and flatten white siding. Glare and aiming covers the mistakes that make a lit house look harsh from the sidewalk. Sample plans puts it together for a ranch, a two-story with a porch, a home on a wooded lot, and a narrow lot or townhome.
Color temperature, RGBW, pixel spacing, controllers and power use are covered elsewhere in plenty of depth, so this guide only names them where a choice depends on them.
Light should have a purpose. A layer that does not help someone see, feel safe, or enjoy the look of the house is a layer to skip. Brighter is almost never the fix: most exterior lighting problems come from fixtures aimed badly or set too strong, not from too few of them. And every layer should be easy to turn off or dim, because the right amount of light at 7 p.m. on a Friday is not the right amount at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday.
This guide comes from Permanent Lighting Solutions. Permanent Lighting Solutions is a veteran-owned installer of permanent roofline LED lighting in Nashville and Middle Tennessee.