How to Create Standout Outdoor Lighting for Your Restaurant

Dazzle Customers with the Right Ambiance for Your Dining Patios and Decks

Lighting plays a significant role in the overall feel of your customers’ dining experience. The atmosphere that you create is just as important as the food you prepare and the service you provide, whether you’re serving casual entrées or three-course meals.

Particularly on warm summer evenings, your customers likely want to enjoy their meals outside on dining patios and decks. As a restaurant owner, you shouldn’t assume nice weather and delicious entrées alone will attract customers and keep them coming back. With the right lighting design, you can dazzle patrons and onlookers from afar.

Our professional outdoor lighting installers can deliver a beautiful and easy-to-control lighting system for your outdoor dining areas in Nashville, TN. Get inspired for your eatery by exploring some outdoor lighting design ideas below.

SEE ALSO: Why Your Restaurant Needs an Outdoor AV Installation This Summer

Elevate Your Curb Appeal

Your restaurant needs to attract customers from the outside. The first impression you make is crucial, and outdoor lighting is key. Consider the curb appeal of your eatery. What does it look like from the road? Professional landscape lighting will help you stand out from neighboring restaurants.

Use landscape lighting to illuminate unique architecture and special features. Washlighting, downlighting, and uplighting can beautifully accentuate gardens, sculptures, waterfalls, and more for enhanced drama and curb appeal.

Illuminate Steps and Pathways

Your customers cover a lot of ground while at your restaurant. Think about all the possible pathways they take: from the parking lot, to the walkways into the building, to their pathway to the outdoor patio.

Each area needs to be well lit for safety, but you also don’t want customers to be distracted by a plethora of lighting fixtures. That means wires need to be concealed, and the right fixtures need to be chosen for each location. Path and niche lights are great for landscaping, overhead lights can hang in trees or over beams, and step lights can highlight stairs and other vertical surfaces.

Use Layers for Added Elegance

When you use different types of light together, you create an artistic effect that goes beyond function. Starting with soft, ambient lighting, you can add accent lighting and decorative features for another layer of ambiance. For example, consider string lights that hang above tables or table lamps that provide a more romantic or festive atmosphere.

Additionally, creating layers of light with various levels of brightness and color temperatures enhances the artistic atmosphere of your dining areas. This is possible with tunable LEDs that offer the full white and RGB spectrum for custom hues based on the look and mood you desire.

Automate Your Lights for Hands-Off Control

You may be thinking that such an extravagant lighting design would be a hassle to control. On the contrary, our team will install an easy-to-use lighting control system that allows for preset scheduling and automation of your lights so you hardly have to lift a finger!

Set your lights to gradually brighten as the sun sets or use intuitive on-wall dimmers and keypads that can control various zones of lights in just a tap. You can even adjust lights throughout your restaurant remotely using a centralized touch panel or mobile device. Our team partners with industry-leading lighting manufacturers like DMF and Lutron to deliver personalized solutions that elevate your unique space and offer intuitive control options for every need.

Ready to dazzle customers with a brand-new outdoor lighting design? Our team is ready to assist. To book a free consultation, contact us here or send us a live chat below.