Architectural Landscape Lighting: An architectural uplighting design

The Brief

Kelowna homeowners increasingly want their properties to look as good after dark as they do in daylight. This project came from a common request we hear across the Okanagan: a home with attractive stonework, mature trees, and a well-designed front landscape that simply disappeared once the sun went down. The goal was to bring the architecture and the planting beds forward at night, rather than washing the whole yard in generic floodlight.

The Approach

Architectural uplighting is a different discipline from the path and step lighting most people picture when they hear “landscape lighting.” Instead of lighting the ground plane for safe travel, the fixtures are aimed upward at vertical features — stone or stucco columns, garage facades, specimen trees, and taller shrubs — to create depth, shadow, and texture after dark. In the Okanagan, that also means specifying fixtures and housings that can handle our wide seasonal temperature swings, from summer heat that bakes south-facing walls to winter freeze-thaw cycles, without the lenses clouding or the housings cracking within a couple of seasons like cheaper big-box kits often do.

What We Built

We used low-voltage LED well lights and adjustable spot fixtures set into the planting beds along the home’s foundation, aimed to graze upward across stone veneer and stucco to bring out its texture rather than flatten it. Select trees and larger shrubs were uplit individually to create layered focal points instead of one flat wash of light, and all fixtures were run on a transformer sized with headroom for future additions. The result is a facade that reads as intentional and dimensional at night, with light and shadow doing as much work as the fixtures themselves.

Curious what architectural lighting could do for your own property? Learn more on our Outdoor Lighting service page, see what we’re building for other homeowners in Kelowna, or browse more completed projects in our full portfolio.