Beautiful Vines, Hypnotic Lights: Stanford Hills After Dark
Some places don’t need much help feeling magical. Stanford Hills Estate is one of them, but we gave it a little anyway.
About two hours east of Cape Town, where the Overberg opens up and the mountains get serious, you’ll find Stanford Hills Estate. It sits just outside Hermanus, wine country, fynbos country, the kind of landscape that makes you exhale the moment you arrive. Their restaurant, Casa Cello, overlooks it all: rolling vineyards, mountain ridgelines, and a sky that puts on a proper show at sunset.
When Stanford Hills asked us to help transform Casa Cello for warm summer evenings, we packed up the van and headed out through the mountains. What we found when we got there was a space that already had so much going for it, beautiful bones, incredible views, an atmosphere that felt genuinely unhurried. Our job wasn’t to create the magic. It was to make sure it didn’t disappear when the sun went down.
The Installation
Casa Cello has two sturdy overhead structures spanning the outdoor dining area, the kind of bones that were practically asking for festoon lights. We strung our Outdoor Drop String Lights across the full length of both, running them taut between anchor points with rubber-coated wire for support, creating an unbroken canopy of warm glowing bulbs above the tables.
The drop string style was a deliberate choice for a space like this. The individual pendant bulbs have a sculptural quality, each one a small, warm point of light that reads beautifully against the darkening sky and the mountain silhouette beyond. As a run, they create the kind of overhead glow that makes an outdoor dining space feel like a room rather than just a patio.
By the time the last of the Overberg light faded and the valley went quiet, Casa Cello felt exactly the way a summer evening restaurant should feel. Warm. Generous. Like there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.
About Stanford Hills Estate
Stanford Hills is a working wine estate with accommodation, a deli, and Casa Cello restaurant, all of it sitting inside one of the most beautiful stretches of the Overberg. The wines are worth the trip on their own. The setting makes it something else entirely.
If you’re planning a weekend away from Cape Town and haven’t been, go. Take the mountain pass, arrive before sunset, and stay for dinner.
The Lights
Everything used in this installation is available in the Stellar Lighting shop. Our Drop String Lights are fully weatherproof, connectable, and built for exactly this kind of permanent outdoor installation.
Shop Outdoor Drop String Lights →
Thinking about lighting your venue or outdoor space? We’d love to help.
Installed by the Stellar Lighting team. Location: Casa Cello, Stanford Hills Estate, Stanford, Western Cape.
