Roofline and Shrub Lighting on a Stone-and-Stucco Home
A stone-and-stucco home with bulbs tying together the garage, center section, entrance and right wing, plus light strings through the foundation shrubs by the front door.
The project
This wide stone-and-stucco home has a two-car garage, a tall arched entrance, several front-facing gables, and roof sections that step across the façade. The house called for a roofline layout that could connect those different elevations, with a second layer of lighting in the foundation plantings.
For this project in Hamburg, we installed evenly spaced bulbs along the visible eaves above the garage, center section, entrance, and right wing. We also distributed light strings through the shrubs on both sides of the front door, including the larger bushes beside the windows and walkway. From the driveway, the roofline ties the separate roof sections together, while the shrub lighting keeps attention near the stone base and entrance. After a snowfall, the warm-white bulbs stand out against the white roof edges, and the lit shrubs glow under their layer of snow.
The challenge
The front of this house steps in and out: a two-car garage on the left under its own roof, a tall stone entry with an arched window, two center gables at different heights and a stone-faced gable on the right wing. Short eave runs meet at many inside and outside corners, and the foundation beds hold dense, rounded shrubs of several sizes along the whole front.
How we lit it
We ran warm white C9 bulbs along the eaves and up the rakes of each gable, keeping the same spacing wherever the line turns a corner or changes height, so the garage roof, the center gables and the right wing read as one outline. The stone entry gable got its own outline, centered over the arched door.
In the beds, each shrub was wrapped on its own with warm white mini string lights, worked through the branches so the light still shows under a layer of snow. One color on the roof and in the plantings lets the stucco and stone keep their daytime tones.
The result
At dusk after a snowfall, the roofline draws a warm line under the white roof edges, and the lit shrubs form a low band that runs from the garage corner to the right wing. From the top of the driveway, the arched entry sits at the center of both layers.
