It seems that outdoor lighting has never before been either so inexpensive or so varied. Yet, this is no warranty of success if you don’t first take some time to consider some simple steps to help ensure an end result that looks great and does what it is supposed to.
Successful garden lighting very much depends on having a well thought plan in the first place, that addresses both the types of lighting you’re after and where you want to locate various light effects. Without any sort of plan you’re setting yourself up for a jumble of badly coordinated schemes that neither work nor look well together.
When you have settled the question of what lighting effects should go where, it is time to address the thorny question of power supply. The choice is fundamentally between solar powered and low voltage garden lighting, and the essential differences are as follows:
- the primary benefit with solar lights is that they are extremely easy to install and rearrange, and you don’t need to link up a regular power source.
- using low voltage cables however means more control over the system and brighter light that stays bright, and you don’t need to start replacing rechargeable batteries once they start wearing out.
With low voltage lighting systems there is one additional choice to make, namely support for LEDs or conventional incandescent light bulbs. You can indeed have both, but the point is that each kind demands its own dedicated power supply – an LED driver or a standard 12v transformer – otherwise there is a serious risk of destroying either or both the lights and transformers.
Don’t however think that making a decent plan means you’re committed to, for example, using only solar or only low voltage lights. In fact a plan can help you figure out how best to blend together elements from both types of system, and combine their differing features.
Successfully combining varied sorts of lighting is mostly a matter of putting together individual lights that work well, rather than fight, with each other. Certainly it can be very much a case of trial and error over the course of a few evenings to select complementary brightness levels.
An effective landscape lighting plan should also help you avert one of the mistakes most frequently made with landscape lighting – having it far too bright. One of the main functions of garden lighting is to create a totally different look and feel at night, not to simply make it look like it normally does except under artificial light.
If you found this article interesting then you’ll want to follow these links to find out more about solar powered garden lights and solar landscape lighting in general.