Facade Lighting: How to Make Your Home's Front Look Its Best at Night

Facade lighting is the most complex part of a landscape lighting system, and the most impactful when it is done correctly. Here is how it works.

What Is Facade Lighting?

Facade lighting illuminates the face of the house itself, the walls, roofline, dormers, columns, chimney, and trim. It is different from path lighting or tree uplighting because the target is the architecture of the building rather than the landscape around it.

Done well, facade lighting makes a house look like the best version of itself at night. Done poorly, it looks like a floodlit commercial building.

The Most Important Rule: Restraint

The instinct with facade lighting is to flood the whole front of the house with light. This is wrong. Flooding a facade creates flat, even illumination that removes all shadow and depth, the result is a wall that looks like it is lit by work lights.

The right approach is to identify the architectural features worth highlighting, columns, brick detailing, a chimney, a gabled dormer, and light those specifically. The contrast between lit features and shadow is what creates the visual interest.

Colonial Homes in Massachusetts

The most common home in eastern Massachusetts is a colonial, and colonial facades respond well to uplighting at the columns and corners. Two fixtures flanking the front door, aimed at the columns or pilasters, transform the whole entry without over-lighting the rest of the facade. Add a pair of fixtures at the corners of the house and you have defined the architecture without washing it.

Shingle-Style Homes in Rhode Island

Shingle-style homes, which are common throughout Rhode Island and coastal Massachusetts, have a different texture that responds better to grazing than to direct uplighting. A fixture placed close to the shingle wall and aimed steeply upward shows off the texture and pattern of the cedar in a way that is genuinely beautiful at night.

What Does Facade Lighting Cost?

Facade lighting is typically the most involved part of a landscape lighting project because it requires more careful fixture placement and aiming than path or tree lighting. A facade lighting package for a typical New England colonial runs between $1,800 and $4,500 installed, depending on the size of the home and the number of features being lit.

The best way to see what your facade could look like is to send us a photo and request a free 24-hour mockup. We will show you the exact fixtures we would use and where each one would go.