Garden lighting information

Garden lighting information for those dark nights

As its getting Dark you may be thinking of some garden or pond lighting, garden lighting can be used in a variety of ways, to be practical, lighting a path or steps, to decorative, lighting a garden feature or pond

There is a vast range of lights to suit your needs, but a few things should be considered.

Decide

First decide what effect you want to achieve, subtle lighting, practical lighting, decorative lighting  or a mixture. please also remember that a plant lit form below looks good. Never buy a set of lights and "make them fit" The best solution I can offer is as i mentioned ,decide what you want to light, how you want to light it, then buy the lights, even if it means buying several sets.

Plan

Plan what you want to achieve, buy a suitable set of lights or buy more than one set, don't just "plant" a bunch of lamps and hope for the best, if you do it will look just like that. (a bunch of lights stuck in the ground)

Colours

You can have various coloured lights (There are coloured led lights now available) blue and green is good for lighting plants and ponds, white is good for statues while red and yellow is good for waterfalls or moving ornaments (windmill etc)  you do not have to stick to these colours it is really a matter of taste.

A word of note:

Please do not rush out and buy the cheapest set of lights you can find, you know the ones "6 lights for £9.99", Why? yes they are lights yes they do work, BUT they are usually only 5 or 7 watt lamps, this is really too dim to light anything, but good for a "glow".

Solar lights

There are a whole variety of solar lights available, but please choose wisely, most solar lights have he small solar cells on the top, which means the best the light can ever do is be a marker light, it can not be use to accent say a plant (Because you can not alter its angle) Solar lights are very good for markers, not much else yet. You may also want to see the page here

In general

I would recommend that you choose safe low voltage lights (12 or 24v) that has a safety transformer that can be plugged in, indoors

I recently had the personal experience of some metal staked lamps, and very nice they looked to, however i needed to move one, i pulled it out of the ground and the in ground stake snapped off, the reason being it had corroded through.

I would there for suggest that any garden lights you buy have plastic stakes, but you should also steer clear of the cheap lights as these do tend to go brittle and snap

Please do not install mains halogen lights on your house to light the whole garden, it does put out a lot of light (too much) is not subtle, and may light your neighbours house (How would you like it if they did it to you)

Also note To install mains operated lights outside this MUST be done by a qualified electrician, who is part P registered, it is NOT a diy job You can still however install low voltage* lights and plug the transformer in, indoors

  see here

 Back to pond advice