Landscape Sun and Shade Record Checklist

Choose a small number of standing positions to photograph from, mark them on a rough sketch of the plot, and use exactly those spots every time.

Photographs taken from wandering positions cannot be compared with each other, and comparison is the entire value of a light record.

Write the date and the rough hour on every observation, because a note about shade with no time attached is close to impossible to interpret later.

Shade notes age badly without a timestamp, and a designer reading them cannot tell a morning shadow from an evening one.

Set repeating reminders on your phone for a morning, a midday and an evening observation instead of relying on remembering to look.

Records kept from memory drift towards the pleasant hours, which is exactly the bias that makes an owner light record misleading.

Keep a separate page for each part of the garden rather than one running list, so the notes on the far corner stay readable as they build up.

A single chronological list mixes areas together and becomes unusable at the point where somebody actually needs it.

Note the sky conditions at each observation, since a reading taken under bright overcast and one taken under clear sky describe different things.

Shade edges are sharp in direct sun and vanish under cloud, so an unlabelled observation can suggest a shadow that was never there.

Ask whoever is at home at the hours you are not to take the missing photographs, and mark those entries with who took them.

Most households have an unobserved gap in the middle of the working period, and filling it honestly beats guessing at it later.

Establish which way the main outdoor space faces using a compass on your phone rather than memory, and mark that direction clearly on your sketch.

Owners are wrong about orientation surprisingly often, and every later assumption about planting and seating inherits the error.

Note which side of the garden picks up the earliest light and which holds it latest, described in your own words rather than as a figure.

A plain description of when light arrives and leaves is more reliable from an owner than any attempt at quantifying it.

Record how the sun moves in relation to the house, noting which elevation it appears from behind and which one it disappears behind at the end of the evening.

Describing the track against a fixed building gives a professional something checkable rather than an abstract statement about aspect.

Mark the parts of the plot you have never seen catching direct sun at any point you have observed, and say how much observation that is based on.

Permanent shade drives planting and surface choices, but only if the claim is presented with the limits of the observation attached.

Write down how each boundary sits in relation to the sun path, since a shadow from a fence lands quite differently along each edge of the same plot.

Owners tend to think of the boundary as one thing, when each edge behaves as a separate light condition.

Check whether an upstairs window gives you a clearer picture of the shade pattern than anything visible at ground level, and photograph from there too.

An elevated view shows the shape of the shadow across the whole plot, which is nearly impossible to read while standing in it.

For every shaded area, write down what is casting the shadow, whether that is your own house, a boundary structure, a neighbouring building or a canopy.

A shaded area without a named cause cannot be discussed, because nobody knows whether anything could be done about it.

Separate the shade you could change by reducing something of your own from the shade arriving from beyond the boundary, and mark each one accordingly.

The two kinds behave completely differently in a design conversation, and mixing them produces suggestions that were never available.

Work to a tree, hedge or structure on neighbouring land is a matter for the owner concerned and for confirming locally what may apply.

Note which shade comes from a deciduous canopy and which from evergreen planting, because the two behave nothing alike once the colder seasons arrive.

A deciduous shadow disappears when leaves drop, while an evergreen one does not, and this single distinction changes what a corner can be used for.

Record shade cast by anything that could disappear without warning, such as an ageing outbuilding next door, a leaning tree or a temporary structure.

Designing on shade that later vanishes leaves a scorched planting scheme, so it is worth flagging which shadows feel impermanent.

Note anything likely to become a shade source in future, including a young tree, a hedge being allowed to grow up or climbing planting on a boundary.

Planting decisions made under today light can fail quietly as a neighbouring canopy closes over the same spot.

Check whether a chimney, roof edge, parapet or projecting element throws a narrow shadow that tracks across the space instead of sitting still.

Moving shadows are easy to miss in a single photograph yet they can cross exactly the spot a table was going to occupy.

Repeat the same set of photographs near the shortest and the longest point of the seasons, since those two sets bracket everything that happens in between.

Two honest extremes are more useful than a scattering of observations taken whenever somebody happened to think of it.

Note where frost or dew lingers well into the morning, because those areas mark the parts of the plot that warm slowly and stay cold longest.

Slow-warming ground affects planting, seating comfort and how surfaces behave, and it is visible without any equipment.

Record which areas fall entirely into shadow once the sun sits low, including places that feel open and bright in the warmer part of the seasons.

Low sun throws shadows far beyond where owners expect, and a bright terrace can be in shade for a long stretch of the cooler seasons.

Watch what happens once leaves come off, as a corner that is heavily shaded in summer can turn into the brightest part of the plot.

This reversal is the single most commonly missed feature of a garden light record and it changes what can be planted there.

Note the point in the seasons when a seating area stops being usable in the evening because the sun has moved off it altogether.

Where the usable season ends matters more to most households than the peak of summer, yet it is rarely written down.

Write down anything that changed between one season and the next, such as a hedge cut hard back, a tree lost in a storm or a new structure next door.

Without a note of the change, a later reader assumes the record is inconsistent rather than that the site itself moved.

List the hours the outdoor space is realistically used on a working weekday and on a free weekend, then check what your record actually says about those hours.

Light is only worth having when somebody is there to use it, and this comparison often reframes which part of the garden matters.

Mark the gaps where nobody is home to observe, and record them as unknown rather than quietly filling them in from what seems likely.

An unknown labelled as unknown is useful; an unknown presented as an observation can send a whole layout in the wrong direction.

Note where the light falls at the hours children are outside, which is frequently a different part of the garden from where adults sit.

Play areas are often placed on the sunniest ground when shade during the hottest hours would serve them better.

Record whether sun still reaches the space at the point in the evening you would want to eat outdoors, or whether it has already gone behind something.

Eating outdoors is one of the most common reasons for a garden project, and it depends on a narrow window of light nobody has checked.

Check what the light does at the moments you pass through rather than linger, such as hanging washing, taking bins out or walking to a store.

Routes used briefly but often are where glare, ice and dark corners are felt, even though they never appear in a brief.

Write down which windows give you a view of sunlight in the garden, since what you see from indoors shapes how much the space gets used at all.

A sunny corner nobody can see from the kitchen tends to stay empty, and this is worth saying out loud before a layout is drawn.

Note where low sun causes glare into a window or straight along a route you walk, and at which point in the morning or evening it happens.

Glare is a genuine constraint on where a screen, a hedge or a seat can go, and it is invisible in any photograph taken at midday.

Record which walls and surfaces stay warm after the sun has left them, since stored heat changes both evening comfort and how planting behaves nearby.

A wall that holds heat can make a sheltered spot usable well into the evening, or make a bed alongside it dry out far faster.

Watch for light bouncing off glazing, a pale wall or a metal surface next door, and note where the reflection lands and at what hour.

Reflected light and heat from a neighbouring surface catches people out because they are looking for the sun, not for its echo.

Note any existing surface that becomes uncomfortably hot underfoot in strong sun, including paving, decking, gravel and artificial grass.

Surface heat determines where children and pets will actually go, and it is easy to record from experience you already have.

Record where a sun trap forms between structures, and whether it feels welcome in the cooler seasons and unbearable in the warmer ones.

The same enclosed corner can be the most valued spot in one season and completely unused in another.

Ask what shading approach would suit the exposure you have recorded, rather than assuming an umbrella or a canopy answers it.

Shade that works in still conditions can be unusable on the same site once wind is taken into account.

Fixed shade structures involve wind loading, fixings and possible local requirements, all of which belong with a qualified professional and local confirmation.

Note where moss, algae or a green film builds up on paving, steps and timber, and whether it returns to the same places each time it is cleaned off.

Recurring growth in the same spot is a reliable marker of shade and still air, and it is far easier to see than the shadow itself.

Record which areas stay damp long after the rest of the plot has dried, and how much later they catch up.

Slow-drying ground affects surface choice, planting and where anything is stored outdoors, and it usually maps onto deep shade.

Write down where grass thins, leans or refuses to establish at all, since this is often the clearest ground-level marker of persistent shade.

Repeated attempts to grow grass in the same shaded strip are a common and avoidable frustration in an otherwise sound scheme.

Note whether any route becomes slippery along its shaded stretches in colder conditions, and exactly where that stretch starts and stops.

The problem is usually confined to a short length of path rather than the whole route, which is worth pinning down precisely.

How a surface performs underfoot depends on material, base and drainage; ask a qualified professional what suits a shaded route here.

Record which existing plants lean towards the light or flower on one side only, as they have been reporting the light conditions for seasons already.

Established planting is the longest-running light record on the plot, and reading it asks nothing of you at all.

Note where a shaded area is also somewhere air never seems to move, since dampness and stillness usually turn up together.

Shaded and sheltered corners stay wet in a way that shaded but breezy ones do not, and the difference matters for what goes there.

Label the whole record as owner observation, and say plainly which parts are inferred rather than seen with your own eyes.

A record that is honest about its own limits gets used properly, while one that overstates itself tends to be discarded entirely.

Put the photographs in order by date and hour rather than by which part of the garden they show, so the sequence tells the story on its own.

A chronological set lets somebody else follow the movement of shade without needing your commentary alongside it.

Write a short summary of what you believe about the light in each area, and keep the underlying photographs so anyone can disagree with your reading.

Separating conclusion from evidence lets a professional reach a different view without having to argue with you about it.

Flag the areas you are least confident about and ask what would settle the question, rather than resolving it yourself for the sake of a tidy record.

The uncertain corners are usually the interesting ones, and naming them focuses professional attention where it is worth spending.

Ask what a designer would want to know about light here that you have not thought to record, before the season for observing it passes.

Light observations cannot be caught up on later, so finding out what is missing early is worth more than any amount of extra detail.

Keep the record running once work begins, since a changed layout alters the shade pattern and the earlier set becomes the comparison.

The before set is the only way to tell whether a new structure or planting did what everybody expected it to do.

Overshadowing, daylight reaching a neighbouring property and anything affecting it are matters for qualified professionals and local confirmation.