Glare is light that reaches your eye straight from the source instead of from the thing it is supposed to light. A bright bulb you can see from the sidewalk, a floodlight shining into a neighbor's bedroom, or a path light that dazzles you as you walk past are all glare. It makes a house look harsher and, oddly, harder to see, because eyes adjust to the bright point and lose detail everywhere else.
DarkSky International and the Illuminating Engineering Society publish five principles for outdoor lighting: light should be useful, targeted, low level, controlled and warm-colored. They are a sound checklist for a house as well as a street.
The single best fix for glare is choosing fixtures where you see the light, not the bulb. Shielded path lights with a cap, wall lanterns with frosted glass, uplights with a glare guard or a deep recessed lens, and fixtures tucked behind shrubs or below a ledge all do this. If you can see the bright point of a fixture from the street, the sidewalk or a neighbor's window, it needs a shield, a new angle or a new position.
An uplight should hit something. Aim it so the beam lands on the wall, column or tree and stops there. Light that runs past the top of a wall or through a thin canopy simply goes into the sky. For a tree, aim into the densest part of the canopy rather than at its outer edge.
Walk the house at night from the inside. Any uplight that reaches a window will shine into that room. Move the fixture, narrow its beam, or tilt it slightly away. Check the neighbors' windows from the property line as well; a fixture that is fine from your driveway can point straight at the house next door.
Exterior lighting usually looks best at levels far below what people first buy. Dim fixtures where you can. Where you cannot, choose a lower output fixture or move it farther from the surface. Pale walls, white trim and smooth stucco reflect more light back, so they need the least. When in doubt, start dim and add, not the other way around.
Bright security floods are a separate job from accent lighting. If you have them, put them on motion sensors aimed at the ground you want to cover, not left on all night. A flood that switches on for a few minutes when someone walks up the drive is far kinder to the street than one that burns until morning.
Roofline fixtures face outward by nature, so the main question is brightness. Turn them down for everyday use, save full brightness for special occasions, and schedule them to switch off late at night. Avoid fast flashing or chasing effects on ordinary evenings; they draw the eye of every passing driver.
Once everything is installed, walk the sidewalk, the street, and both property lines after dark. Note any visible bright point, any light on a window, and any spot brighter than the front door. Fix those three things and most glare problems are gone.