It seems that most properties that are built these days never have enough lights in them to adequately light everything as well as it should. The architects who design modern homes in Australia appear to always include as few lights as possible, obviously to keep costs down and to produce the absolute minimum cost home they can.
Even though we added a few extra lights to our home in the design phase, I feel like it still wasn’t enough. Here is a list of places to consider adding lights to before you build, or even getting added after you build.
The Back Yard
Apart from the laundry door and under the alfresco entertaining area, our yard had no additional lighting in its original plan. We organised an extra light just outside the garage door, to add light to the area we were planning to keep our rubbish bins. This included a light switch from inside the garage near the doorway so we could easily turn this light on and off.
We also added an extra light near the corner of the house to light up the other end of the yard. This fits between the alfresco and the garage door, hopefully providing an even fill of light for nighttime entertaining. The light switch for this is right next to the light for the alfresco, which makes sense.
Where we may have gone wrong is that we do not have a light where the clothesline will be. The light from the laundry door seems a little too far away to adequately help us light up the outside if we ever need to bring the washing in at night.
The Front Yard
Whilst we do have a light under the entranceway, by the front door, it would have been great to have a sensor light in front of the garage. There’s no way to light up the front area when you arrive home without opening the garage door. This might be less of a problem if we start entering through the garage, but haven’t been doing yet as we are currently storing everything in there that we haven’t yet unpacked.
In the Garage
The original light bulb that came with our garage was incredibly weak. We recently replaced this and it has made a massive improvement. I’d consider asking your builder to ensure the bulb used in the garage is a bright one, as replacing it immediately is a bit of a waste.
Inside the House
I’d say that the inside of the house is definitely where the most attention is placed when designing the house. My main issue is that light switch placements aren’t always in the most practical locations. Especially for rooms in the middle of the house that can be accessed from different directions.
Our kitchen area has one light switch that is best accessed for people who are entering from the secondary bedrooms and bathrooms. As have no kids, no one is coming from that direction to turn the lights on. Instead, we have to walk past the kitchen in darkness to reach the light switch. It’s a mild inconvenience but we keep instinctively flicking the hallway light instead, which is much closer to us.
