A desert backyard photographed at noon and again at nine reads as two separate properties. The daytime version belongs to the sun, which flattens everything under the same hard light and sends most people back indoors by mid-morning. The evening version is the one a homeowner actually gets to enjoy, and whether it exists at all comes down to outdoor lighting.

This is worth stating plainly, because lighting is usually the line item that gets deferred. The hardscape, the kitchen, the fire feature, and the plantings absorb the budget and the attention, and the lighting plan gets treated as something to sort out later. Later tends to mean a few path lights and a fixture over the grill, which is enough to walk through the yard but not enough to want to.