Garden Light for Practical and Decorative Purposes

There’s no better way to add functionality, aesthetic value, and security to your home than to give your garden light. Your garden has taken countless hours of work to create the perfect atmosphere, so why should you stop enjoying it just because the sun goes down? Garden lighting accomplishes a variety of tasks. First, you can create a very good atmosphere that will allow you to entertain guests outside on warm nights. Garden lights also can help with security, so you can discourage critters or some burglars from prowling around your yard late at night. Garden light also serves a decorative purpose in addition to the functionality it adds to your garden. It can completely change the look of your garden and also make your house look more attractive, improving your property value.

There are several different types of light your can cast on your garden. They are ambience, feature, flood, and security lighting. There are also a variety of different setups you can use for your lights. You can use low voltage garden lights that tap into your house’s power or solar garden light, which is completely self-sufficient.

Types of Garden Light

There are several different types of lighting you can use to brighten up your garden at night.  They can be used alone or in different combinations to bring your garden alive at night.  The first type of lighting is feature lights.  Feature lights are used to light up a particular plant, tree, or area that you would like to stand out in the dark.  This effect is most commonly achieved through the use of a spotlight.  Spotlights are mounted on a stake or wall and cast a large amount of focused light in whatever direction you choose.  Another option is the use of uplights.  Uplights have the same purpose as spotlights, but the casings for the light are buried in the ground or recessed into the floor of a porch or deck.

If you’re planning on entertaining outside, the two options for lighting your entertaining area are floodlights and ambience lighting.  Floodlights are powerful lights that cast light on a large area.  This makes it much easier to see outside for your guests.  Ambience lighting is another popular option.  Ambience lighting is much dimmer than the light that floodlights use and can use colored bulbs, lanterns, tiki lights, or globe lights to achieve the desired feel for your outside garden.

The final type of lighting is security lighting which usually involves the use of lights attached to motion sensors.  You can attach them to a switch as well so you can see what’s going on outside at night and also hopefully scare away and critters or people that decide to trespass on your property late at night.

Options for Installing Garden Lights

There are two major options for installing your garden lights. You can install them connected to your house’s normal power or you can install solar garden lighting. The major advantage of connecting your garden lights to your home’s energy supply is that you will be able to place lights in area that are in the shade for most of the day and will have more choices of lamps because they won’t have to have solar cells attached to them. However, you may have to hire an electrician to run wires depending on how extensive the lighting you intend to install is and also will have to buy and install a low voltage box. This turns the voltage down on the lights so that people won’t get electrocuted if it is wet outside or something happens with the wires.

The other easier and more popular option is to install solar garden lights. Recent advances in solar cell technology means that solar lights now come in almost every color and size imaginable. They are also extremely affordable and available in nearly every gardening or home improvement store. They are cheaper to maintain, rely on a green source of energy, and you don’t have to run any wires because each lamp will have its own solar cell on it. Most also come with a sensor that automatically turns the lights on at dusk and turns them off at dawn. This, coupled with advances in LED landscape lighting, ensures that the lights burn bright and for a long time as LEDs almost never need changed. The only downside is that if they are placed in shady areas these lamps may not be as bright or burn for as long as you might like.

There are many different options for lighting your garden. When trying to decide which lights to buy, try to figure out what you would like to light up in your garden and the desired atmosphere and effect you would like to achieve. Once this is done, you can choose either to rig the lights to your home’s power with the use of a low voltage converter, which is useful if your garden is shady, or use solar yard lights to save some money on installation and maintenance.