Pool, Patio and Deck Lighting

Still water is a mirror, and it is aimed at you

This is the thing that makes pool lighting different from everything else on a property. A pool at night is a horizontal mirror, and anything bright near its edge appears twice: once as the fixture and once as a hard reflection sitting on the surface.

It is why so many expensive pool decks are uncomfortable after dark. Nothing is technically wrong; there is simply a row of small suns lying on the water wherever you sit.

The answer is to move the light up and back. Fixtures in the surrounding trees, under the eaves of the house, in a pergola or a pool house, and in the structures around the deck rather than at its edge. Light arrives from above at a steep angle, the surface stays dark and reflective in the way water should be, and what you see in it is the lit trees and the lit house.

What still gets lit at ground level

Some things genuinely need light where they are, and those are the ones where a fall happens:

• Steps and level changes. Every riser between the house and the water, lit from the side or from beneath the nosing so the tread edge reads clearly.
• Coping. The pool edge itself has to be unmistakable from every approach, particularly where the deck material and the coping are similar in tone.
• Rails and grab bars. Lit from beneath, which also makes the ironwork itself worth looking at.
• Changes in surface. Where stone meets grass, or a deck meets a path.

All of these are low output and shielded. You should be able to see the edge without ever seeing the thing that showed it to you.

Decks, pergolas and covered structures

A roof over an outdoor room is an opportunity, because it gives you a ceiling to light from. Fixtures set into a pergola's beams or a porch soffit put light down onto the table and the floor and leave the sight lines clear, which is exactly how you would light the same room indoors.

Wooden decks take small fixtures into the rail posts and beneath the stair nosings. On a deck that stands well above grade, lighting the ground underneath it is worth doing too, because it removes the black void the deck otherwise sits on and makes the whole structure feel anchored.

Water features are their own problem

A fountain, a waterfall or a spillway behaves nothing like a pool, because the water is moving. Moving water scatters light instead of reflecting it, so a fixture placed within or beneath the flow makes the water itself glow.

Getting that right is a matter of where in the flow the fixture sits and how the beam meets the falling water; a few inches changes it completely. It is one of the more enjoyable things we do, and there are several examples in the gallery.

Electrical and code

Low-voltage work near a pool has clearance rules about how close a fixture and a cable may come to the water, and those are not negotiable. Routing gets planned on the drawing against the deck construction rather than worked out on the day.

Underwater lighting inside the pool shell is a different trade, installed by the pool builder. We light everything around the water and will coordinate with whoever handles what is in it.