Nothing says summer like a backyard barbecue or bash with friends and family. For those times when your get-together goes on past dusk, you’ll need some outdoor lighting to keep the party lit — both literally and figuratively. Outdoor lighting can amp up the ambiance of your patio, yard or deck, but also help improve your home’s security, safety and curb appeal.

A set of string lights, hurricane lanterns or tiki torches can add some illumination to your exterior hangout spot in a pinch, but professionals offer more permanent options to take your outdoor lighting to the next level. Backyard lighting doesn’t have to be a simple bulb besides your door.

Strategically installed outdoor lighting is a great way to highlight your landscaping as well as the architectural features of your home. Consider illuminating garden areas or underlighting attractive trees or bushes on your property. Cast a light on garden structures or hardscapes.

You can also mount exterior lights on your home to highlight arches, dormers, columns or other interesting or unique design features. Some options for exterior and landscape accent lighting:

Home improvement stores sell products for DIYers, but professionals who offerOutdoor lighting improves home security

Flood lights, which are a good option for home security, can cast a beam of up to 40 degrees — just use these sparingly so as not to annoy your neighbors or contribute unnecessarily to light pollution.

Consider these options:

Continuous lighting: Keeps the lights on all night.

Motion-detected lighting: Flashes on when something or someone moves in proximity to your home — be it friendly visitors or potential thieves.

You can also install a combination of the two types of lighting. A

Have a professional install pathway lighting along your front and backyard walks to provide safe passage around your property at night. You can set your lights on a timer that corresponds to sundown and sunrise depending on the time of year so that no one even has to be home to turn on the lights.

Some ideas: Garden lights that cast a canopy of light can make great pathway markers. Downlights can be mounted on trees or structures to illuminate the ground.

Cappuccino Doughnuts courtesy of Ann Stratton from CountryLiving.com

Find your angle. 

Playing with the direction and angle of your light source is essential. With the right play between light and shadow, you can accent the most titillating parts of your dish, while camouflaging any flaws. Texture greatly contributes to the delicious appearance of most any meal. Notice how the angle of the light below highlights the different textures within this broiled flank-steak sandwich.

Let’s first consider some of the problems that you are likely to encounter with an undersized air conditioning system, which tends to be the more obvious issue in terms of improper sizing. Your air conditioner will struggle to cool your home effectively, as it has not the power to do so. As a result, it will run much more than it should have to in order to cool your home down. This in turn drives up energy costs, meaning that you may actually find yourself paying more money for a lesser performance from your home cooling system. If you think that you deserve better than this from your AC, you must have a system that is of the right size for your living space. Just remember that an oversized system is really no better.

There are a few issues which you may encounter with an air conditioning system which is too big for your home. First and foremost, you may find that the system actually cools your home too quickly. Now, you may not understand precisely why this would be a problem. There are a few reasons, though. Your system will cycle on and off more frequently than it should, which both uses excess energy and puts unnecessary strain on the system. Additionally, your AC will fail to dehumidify the air as it normally would, which can have detrimental effects on your indoor air quality. Finally, you are paying for cooling capacity that you simply do not need. Let us install your AC so that it is guaranteed to be of the right size.