In 2026, St. Louis landscape lighting is no longer about adding a couple of pathway lights to your garden or entryway.
Homeowners are looking for outdoor lighting that feels layered and intentional – design-forward installations that break traditional landscape lighting molds. Mature trees, outdoor living spaces, lush garden beds, walkways, and patios all benefit from a truly custom lighting design that marries aesthetics and function.
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of St. Louis can help you highlight the positive features of your landscape while creating the ultimate ambiance around backyard patios and gardens. Your home’s landscaping is beautiful by day. We’ll make it really shine at night, all with unique and perhaps unexpected trends in 2026 that we believe could be here to stay.
1. Tree Lighting: Moonlighting and Uplighting for Trees
St. Louis tree lighting is one of the most timeless and dramatic ways to elevate a property. For 2026, homeowners are choosing tree lighting to create depth and movement after dark. In many neighborhoods and yards, trees are the most beautiful elements of properties. Lighting for trees brings them into the home’s overall nighttime scene.
Moonlighting is created by installing lights high up in trees, aiming them downward to pass the illumination through the branches. This creates a dramatically beautiful glow that feels similar to moonlight as if filters through a tree canopy. It’s the perfect addition, whether the tree sits close to a patio or walkway or stands tall as a singular focal point in your yard.
Uplighting creates an equally bold effect for tree feature lighting. In this case, the lighting fixtures are placed at ground level, aimed upwards to highlight the tree trunk, branches, and the overall shape of the tree. Uplighting trees works well for mature trees, as well as ornamental trees.
2. Sphere Lighting
We believe sphere lighting is gaining popularity in 2026, because it offers an artistic and modern feel to outdoor spaces. These globe-style fixtures offer a glow to planting beds, along walkways and patios, or anywhere throughout your garden area.
Rather than blend into the landscape, globe or sphere lights stand on their own design merit. They feel elegant, contemporary, and magical. If you’re looking for lighting that provides more than visibility, sphere lighting will add visual interest and tons of personality to your landscaping – on the ground or up in the trees.
3. Reed Lights
Reed lights are another decorative landscape lighting trend to watch in 2026. These lights, also referred to as bamboo lights, offer warmth, texture, and a bit of the unexpected – without feeling too whimsical.
Reed-shaped lights work among lush garden beds, around patio and pool areas, where homeowners want their lighting to feel decorative. Nature inspires their slender, vertical shape, making them ideal for ornamental grasses, dense or layered plantings, by water features, or relaxed backyard living spaces.
4. Decorative Bollard Lighting
Bollard lighting is no longer reserved for commercial or hospitality venues. In 2026, these decorative vertical landscape lighting fixtures are popping up and growing in popularity for residential yards. Bollard lights are beautiful as a stand-alone lighting feature or used in a series along pathways or around garden beds.
Bollards are practical in a way because they help improve visibility and help guide movement around the property. Decorative bollard lighting adds an element of structure and definition while providing a true artistic flair by casting shapes in light and shadow on all sides.
Searching for outdoor lighting near me?
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of St. Louis can take your home or business’ exterior to the next level with high-quality outdoor soffit lighting, professionally installed and made to last. Get in touch with us at (636) 202-0369 to schedule your consultation today!
Ask about our Shine 365 outdoor lighting warranty program and keep your outdoor lighting system shining beautifully for life!
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of St. Louis offers professional outdoor lighting repair and maintenance on any outdoor lighting system, no matter the age or who installed it.