How To Get The Best From Solar Powered Garden Lighting

The route to a successful outcome in any project starts by clearly defining the objective, and in that respect installing outdoor solar lighting is no different. Ask yourself whether you want to provide an evening entertainment area, improve security and/or safe access, or simply add an extra visual dimension to your garden at night.

You might of course choose any or all of the above plus a few other ideas of your own, which means you will also have to figure out how to balance various competing demands on your solar lighting layout. So you can see then that specifying your various objectives upfront makes it a whole lot easier to divide your outdoor spaces into discrete zones and identify suitable light fittings.

Solar deck lights for example won’t deter many intruders (though these highly versatile little devices will function very well in many situations such as path or drive markers). Equally you probably don’t want bright floodlights on your entertaining areas, and while low level coloured lights look lovely as decorative features in the garden they won’t help your guests see what they’re eating or drinking.

Outdoor solar lights that are intended to be primarily functional in nature (rather than simply appearing attractive) are easiest to install since the criteria they have to meet are typically well defined. When illuminating a pathway, for example, the simple test is whether the lighting does indeed enable you to safely navigate the path at night. Likewise, solar security lights should fully flood those areas you wish to secure against possible intruders.

Decorative solar garden lighting doesn’t have to conform to specific requirements in the same way as functional lighting but there are still some guidelines worth noting. First and most obvious is that solar lights need to recharge each day which means either the lights themselves (or their solar panel if using an external charging system) need to be sited in a sunny daytime location.

Second, solar garden lights, even those fitted with high brightness LED bulbs, are almost always not as bright as mains powered garden lights. The reason is simply that they have only the single battery charge to last many hours, whereas mains powered lights have effectively an unlimited of power. However, this feature can be put to very good use in a number of ways, one of which is to densely pack solar lights together for interesting effects that are difficult to achieve with mains lighting.

Third, one of the major advantages of solar garden lighting is that not only is it incredibly easy to install in the first place, but almost more importantly it is very easy to experiment with the installation until you get it just right. You’re not quite literally tied to a fixed length cable and can keep on adjusting the layout as required (if needs to be to suit plant growth or die back as seasons change).

Finally, always keep it in mind that it’s your garden and you can do just about anything you like. There are no rules that say, for instance, you can’t string solar rope light through trees or hang solar lanterns from random branches. If you like it then it’s “correct” and remember that no-one ever made a garden look worse by installing lighting – any lighting is better than no lighting.

If you found this interesting then be sure to check out this additional article that looks at solar deck lights in more detail.