If the area around your home is dark at night, this spring, consider increasing the light around your home and increasing the overall curb appeal of your home with some landscape lighting. Here are four things that you need to keep in mind as you create your landscape lighting plan for your home.

#1 Use A Combination Of Lights

When planning what types of lights to use, don't feel like you need to use the same lights throughout your landscaping set-up. The best landscape lighting plans incorporate the use of accent lights, task lights and overall lights. This will help increase the curb appeal of your home and will create a more interesting look. For example, you may want to use accent lights near specific shrubs or features in your yard, and you may want to use overall larger lights near trees or your entry way to light things up.

#2 Be Careful About Where You Place Your Lights

You also want to be careful about where you place your lights; you don't want to create light pollution with your outdoor lights. Make sure that your landscape lighting does not shine into your neighbor's home or windows. Your lights should also not be set up in a way that they will shine directly into people's eyes as they walk or drive by your home; your set-up should make your home brighter; it should not blind people as they walk or drive past your home. Finally, make sure that you don't add so many lights that the night sky is totally washed out.

#3 Use Timers Or Motion Sensors

To keep your energy usage in check, you are going to want to use motion sensor lights for the larger spot lights that you put around your home. Motion lights are especially useful around your entryway. For the rest of the lights in your yard, consider setting them on a timer so that way they are only on during the hours that they need to be on and so you don't have to worry about turning your lights on and off every day.

#4 Set Up The Lights At Night

Finally, make sure that you position your lights at night. This will allow you to see how the lights actually interact with your trees, bushes and shrubs. It will allow you to see how the shadows are cast and how the light really looks. Find a lightening contractor who is willing to set the lights up at night or do a run through with the lights at night and make adjustments based on how the lights actually look; you can't predict exactly how the lights will look when setting them up during the daytime.