Super Fitness Health BlogThe 5 Most Important Things To Consider When Designing Your Garden Lighting
When considering garden lighting for your property it is very important to plan ahead before jumping in and installing your lights. If you follow our guide below then you will understand the most important points to consider when planning your garden lighting and should end up with a stunning garden at night that will give you pleasure for years to come.
1. Garden Lighting – Which Style of Lights and Where
We believe it best to keep things simple. Look at the outdoor space you have and follow our basic lighting layout advice, after choosing the fittings you find most attractive. Think of the areas where there will be most activity. Think of any seating or dining areas that would benefit from being well lit. Consider your favorite aspects that would benefit from the addition of garden lighting, inc. water features, sculptures, planted borders, specific plants, hedges and/or trees, pathways, steps, terrace and deck areas.
You may want to place a good light source near gateways, parking areas or garage doors for both security and practicality. This will help choose which types of lighting are best. Self install garden lights are designed to guarantee your safety and that of your children and pets. 12 Volt (low voltage) is considered to be safe by European guide lines. Improved technology has now allowed 12 Volt lighting to provide sufficient light output to illuminate gardens and create ambient and atmospheric light effects.
The safety and simplicity of this lighting system makes it possible for anyone to install these lighting themselves. The complete systems, from transformer to the fitting itself, is manufactured with watertight screw connectors so no tools will be necessary during installation. The assembly of the lamps may require a screwdriver.
Garden lights are suitable for installation in both existing and new-build or renovated gardens.
2. Plug and Play
Means simple to install and easy to illuminate. This type of garden light offers you a series of lighting products that can be easily and safely installed by everybody and without an electrician. Each lamp is supplied with sufficient cable with a watertight screw connector, which fits the connectors to the main cable. It doesn’t any get easier! All cables and transformers are supplied with these easy to use, watertight screw connectors.
3. What to avoid
Think about how you might view your garden lighting from inside your home too. Looking out on a beautifully illuminated garden in the evening can be a real pleasure – but make sure the lighting is directed away from you – the last thing you want is any glare
4. Thinking ahead
Low voltage lighting is always recommended for self installation projects and is well suited to many domestic garden lighting schemes, although when halogen lamps are used the low voltage light fittings do get very hot when in use! We would always recommend that you choose to replace the halogen lamps with LED lamps as they last 20 times as long, run at only 10% of the electricity consumption, and remain cool which is really important if children are likely to play in the garden. That’s always our advice.
A number of lights within our product range are fitted with LED’s. Before now LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes) only had a limited light output and were therefore only suitable for low level, ambient lighting effects such as car dashboards. They were also only available in a limited number of colours.
New technologies and production techniques have now resulted in LED’s that are more powerful and versatile, making new applications possible. Now you can find them in cellular phones, traffic lights and in the rear brake lights in cars. And now you can also find them in our garden lighting.
The big advantages of LED’s are their extremely low energy consumption and the long life expectancy. A LED is also shock proof, runs far cooler than conventional lamps but can still be changed as easily (with a few exceptions)
Lighting fitted with our LED’s are extremely well suited for ambient and mood lighting applications.
5. Getting the lighting effect mix right
Garden lights are usually designed to be installed at three varying height levels: ground, mid height or high on a wall or post (or in a tree). Different lighting effects created from these three positions will vary according to the design of the individual light fitting you choose
It’s always nice to have a mixture of garden light fittings at varying heights within your scheme to achieve varying textures and lighting effects when viewed from different areas within the house and garden. Sometime uplighting is ideal where the light “looks up” at medium height trees or bushes, however sometimes the best choice is a medium height light fitting “looking down” over low level attractive plants and foliage.
This article was brought to you by Garden Lighting UK, as UK based specialist retailer, designer and installer of high quality garden lighting at low prices.
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