Toronto editionOctober 2026
Toronto
Leave some dark.
The Toronto edition starts at GTA front doors and Union Station’s Great Hall, then walks out to the best-lit parks, squares and old walls we could find.
Front doors
GTA houses, the crews who light them, and the city’s own front door at Union Station. Light the arrival; let the lawn stay in dusk.
Who lights a Toronto houseThree GTA outfits, three ways into the same problem: make the house read as a house after dark, and make the door easy to find.
Trace every gable. Leave the stone quiet.Home Highlight outlines a complicated roof in warm light and lets the walls stay walls.
Light the tree that owns the lawn.Moonstruck Lighting lifts a multi-trunk canopy and keeps the stone house as a warm backdrop.
The city’s front door gets its chandeliers backA New York studio has been working on the lighting of Union Station’s Great Hall since 2015, with the City of Toronto and Parks Canada.
Light the tree before the facade.In this Kichler photograph, one tree in the entry court is the subject and the house stays quiet, with a few uplights on the entry screen. One warm uplight on a front tree can do more than a wash across the whole wall.
The approach is the welcome.A driveway of small uplights leads the eye to the door without lighting the whole garden. Keep the fittings below eye height and aim them into the foliage, not back toward the street.
Three layers, one house.Path lights mark the walk, a porch light marks the door, and the rooms behind the glass are the third layer. Add them in that order, and stop when the route feels easy.
The kit
What sits behind a lit garden: a transformer, a path light, an uplight and a plan. Mostly manufacturer images, labelled as such.
A low light makes a long shadow.Aimed bollards keep the light on the walk and off the neighbours.- The transformer is the quiet part.Every low-voltage garden starts at a box on the wall: the transformer, a timer and a circuit you can find. Mount it where you can reach it, and label the runs before the beds are planted.
The path can be the whole point.In Kichler’s whole-home picture, a stepping-stone path carries most of the light and the rest of the garden is allowed to stay dark. It is a rendering, but the lesson holds: start with the route.
Find the edge of the garden room.A single path light at the corner of a bed marks where the planting stops and the stepping stones begin.
Light the pause between two steps.Around a pool and a pavilion, small step lights mark each change in level, and the water and the fire do the rest.
The tree is architecture after dark.One trunk lit from below, the porch lit from above and a line of low path lights between them: three jobs, each done once.
Let the planting keep its mystery.A path light over flagstone steps lights the treads and one boulder. The planting behind stays in shadow.
Build a route, not a grid.Lights tucked under the caps of a stone wall graze the stone below it. The wall becomes the route marker, with no stakes in the lawn.
Parks after dark
Public parks in San Francisco, London and Hong Kong, lit by designers who decided early what should stay dark.
A hierarchy of light, fourteen acres wideAt Presidio Tunnel Tops, the brightest light is on the paths, the lawns get less, and the playground switches off at night.
The boardwalk that dims for batsCanada Water’s red timber boardwalk is lit for commuters on winter evenings, then turns warmer and dimmer as the night goes on.
A bench with its own reading lightAt Elephant Park, the lighting is built around places to sit, and the paths are lit just enough to find them.
Nothing points upThe Tree House at Elephant Park uses 2700K light and no upward-facing sources, for the people on its roof and for wildlife.
Leave the lawn darkSalisbury Garden lights its edges and lets the lawn become a place to watch the skyline.
Leave room for the distant skyline.At Presidio Tunnel Tops, a low glow on the near paths and planting sits below the evening horizon, and the city lights stay far off.
Let the bridge be the horizon.From the Presidio, restrained lighting on the near paths leaves the Golden Gate Bridge as the destination in the view.
Light the path. Leave the bridge alone.Bollards every few paces carry the walk. The bay and the bridge stay in their own light, so the park does not have to compete with them.
A garden room above the city.At Nature Discovery Park in Hong Kong, the lighting makes a dining pavilion the warm destination, with playful details around it and learning spaces that are lit to work.
A halo around the lawn.At the University of Birmingham’s 12-acre Green Heart park, a halo of light rings the central lawn, and the brightest light goes on the main walking and cycling routes.
Squares and yards
Commercial places in London and Miami that lit thresholds, steps and trees instead of whole facades.
Don’t light the facade. Light the door.At Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross, the bold decision was not to over-light the old brick buildings, and to draw people in from inside instead.
Trace the old frameAt Gasholders London, custom lenses keep the light on the ironwork and out of the flats.
Water between glowing stepsAt Exchange Square, the light is low, the steps glow, and the birch trees change colour with the seasons.
A quiet square, held by lightRathbone Square balances its garden against the lit windows of the flats and offices around it.
Choose one sculptural focus.At Palm Court in Miami’s Design District, Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome is lit from inside and sits in a pool kept dark on purpose, so that it reflects.
Wash the stone. Leave the glass dark.In a Kichler photograph of an office building it names the Monarch Centre, a low, warm graze makes the stone readable while the windows stay a dark mirror.
Bridges and water
Infrastructure that became a landmark by lighting one line well: a rail bridge in Manchester, a river in Sweden, a building like a hillside in Shanghai.
A railway bridge, lit like a landmarkThe Ordsall Chord in Manchester is the world’s first asymmetric network arch bridge. Its lighting was worked out with mock-ups and 3D models.
Twenty years of light on one small riverFor the 20th anniversary of Lights in Alingsås, two of its longtime designers gave the town a permanent installation on the river Lillå.
A hillside of luminous treesAt 1000 Trees, each planter is treated as a pixel in one night-time image, and every tree had to be lit without glare.
Frame the harbour.Along Hong Kong’s Avenue of Stars, soft white light ripples along the harbour wall and the promenade stays quiet, so the skyline across the water remains the show.
Reset the city’s grey light.At Taikoo Place, Speirs Major replaced the grey layer of light spilling in from neighbouring plots with a darker ‘night light’, which let it introduce contrast, something the studio calls unusual in Hong Kong.
Follow the corners.On Napoleon Bridge at Barangaroo, linear light along each corner of the twisting frames reveals the bridge’s form for people walking between the CBD and the new district.
Old walls, warm light
Heritage sites in Saudi Arabia, Italy and Spain, where the colour of the light matters more than the amount.
Torchlight for a mud-brick cityAt-Turaif, the first capital of the Saudi state, is lit in one exact shade of gold, as if by flickering torches.
A farm from 1782, lit at 2700KCascina Ranverso’s long restored facade gets one warm colour, fitting by fitting.
Let a gateway emerge from the treesAt Gabriele d’Annunzio’s hillside estate, lighting added in 2017 washes the paths from inside the old stone walls.
Let stone carry the warmth.A late-19th-century tuff building among olive groves in Puglia, restored as a holiday house by the architect Angela Sabatelli, is lit with the same restraint as the architecture: every fitting listed is 3000K.
Give the entrance a soft outline.At Villa Punta Pennata, narrow lines follow the central arch and softer washes find the side windows, while the planting stays a dark foreground. Most fittings listed are 3000K.
Give each garden island its own light.Corte Martinelli, a late-19th-century villa in Andria with a park of almost 30,000 square metres, lights its colonnade, summerhouse and fountain as separate islands, with dark paving between them.
End with the trees.In a grove around a small stone cross at Moraña, in Spain, the trees are lit at 4000K, one of only two cool choices in this issue. The canopy holds the scene together.
Before the holidays
The people who hang half a million lights, and three pictures of what they make.
Half a million lights, hung by handLongwood Gardens’ holiday display is the work of dozens of gardeners, arborists, craftspeople and volunteers. Last December, the garden photographed them at work.
Stars on still water.On Longwood’s Small Lake, star sculptures sit on and beside the water, and the calm surface doubles them.
An arch is a promise.The 200-foot tunnel of lights in the Meadow Garden returned last season: a bright canopy over a darker walking surface.
Keep the route inside the blue.On the Meadow Garden boardwalk, cool light on the trees sets the mood and small edge lights show where to walk.