Pool Lighting After Dark: What to Plan and What to Ask For

Summer evenings in Maryland and southeast Pennsylvania are long and warm, and a lot of pool time happens after the sun drops. If the only light out back is a porch bulb, the pool goes dark with the day. A well-planned lighting layout changes that. It also makes the yard safer, which matters more than most people expect.

Lighting is easiest to do right when it's planned alongside the pool, not added later. Here's what to think about.

Start with the pool itself

Underwater lights do two jobs. They make the water glow, which is the part everyone notices, and they let you see the steps, the edges and the bottom. For anyone swimming at night, that second job is the more important one.

LED fixtures are now the standard choice. They use less electricity than the older incandescent style, they last a long time, and many models can change color. Where the lights go matters as much as what they are. Placement determines whether the water looks evenly lit or has dark patches and harsh glare. A designer thinks about this before the pool is built, because the niches for the lights are part of the pool structure.

Light the way to the water

The path from the house to the pool is where people trip. A step you know by heart in daylight becomes a surprise at dusk, especially with wet feet. Pathway and patio lighting solve that, and they do it quietly, with low fixtures that wash the ground rather than blinding anyone.

Patio lighting covers the places where you actually spend time: the dining area, the seating, the corner by the grill. Done well, it feels like a soft set of pools of light connected by shadow, not a floodlit parking lot.

Put the trees to work

A tree lit from below is one of the best things you can do to a backyard after dark. Garden focal points, such as a specimen tree, a stone wall or a planting bed, give the eye somewhere to land beyond the water. They also make the yard feel larger, because the edges stop disappearing into blackness.

The trick is restraint. Light only the things worth looking at, and aim fixtures so that nobody is looking straight into a bulb from the patio.

Safety is the point as much as style

• Light steps, ledges and any change in level, indoors to outdoors and deck to pool
• Keep glare out of the eyes of swimmers and anyone walking the path
• Use fixtures meant for outdoor and wet locations, installed with safety in mind
• Make sure the gate, the pool edge and the equipment area are not left in the dark
• Think about switching: you want one easy place to turn everything on, and not a hunt for five switches

Electricity and water are a combination that calls for a professional installation. That's one of the reasons to have lighting done by the same people who build the pool, who know where the wiring, the bonding and the fixtures need to go.

Can we go green?

People ask us this a lot, and the answer is yes. There are several ways to make a pool more energy-efficient, and lighting is one of them.

• LED lighting: efficient and long-lasting, and a natural fit for the pool and the landscape
• Programmable electronic controls: set schedules for lights and equipment so they run when you need them and rest when you don't
• The type of pump you select: this is a major piece of how much energy a pool uses over a season
• An automatic pool cover: helps keep the pool clean and covered when nobody's using it

None of these changes how the pool looks. They change how it runs, and they're easiest to include when the pool is designed, though many can be added to an existing one.

Plan it as one system

The best lighting isn't a pile of fixtures. It's a plan: pool lights, path lights, patio lights and a few carefully chosen accents, all controlled from the same place. When it's part of the whole poolscape, along with the deck, plantings and any water features, it ends up looking like it was always there.

Admiral Pools designs and installs custom outdoor lighting for pool areas and backyards across northern Baltimore County, Harford County and Cecil County, and into Chester, Lancaster and York counties in Pennsylvania. If you'd like to see what your yard could look like at nine o'clock on a July night, call us at (667) 364-8868 or stop by our Abingdon location at 4305 Pulaski Hwy. Quotes are free.