Get More From Your Garden With Garden Lighting
That old saying, ‘if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly,’ is very applicable to illuminating your garden. Go at it like a bull in a china shop and the result is likely to be as haphazard as your thoughts. If you’re at a loss for ideas or you’re not very good at visualising final results, start a notebook in which you keep magazine pictures, quick sketches, or written descriptions of what it is you wish to attain.
You will soon begin to notice a sort of coherence in the ideas and pictures you’ve collected, discovering what you like in terms of garden design as well as, perhaps even more importantly, the things you don’t like.
We are not for one moment proposing that you copy other garden lighting designs faithfully, rather you should be attempting to take the ideas you’ve collected and mould them to your own needs and situation.
There are many types of light and light fitting that go to making up a complete lighting scheme and the beauty of it all is that you don’t need to get it all at once. You can leave certain items until you can either afford them or until exactly the right light fitting comes along. However, there is one aspect of your garden lighting scheme that you should aim to get installed as quickly as possible, the security and safety aspect (which are two different things, by the way).
For outside security lighting there is no need to get in specialised garden floodlights and the like, unless you want to. You can achieve just as much security with a range of everyday outdoor light fittings. For instance, there is a whole selection of garden wall lights able to fulfil your security and safety; in fact, outdoor wall lights with PIR are probably the most common type of security lighting used in the UK ; if you already have standard wall lights installed, you can always install a separate PIR movement sensor.
With security lighting, style shouldn’t be the most important criteria; however, the majority of us would want to install a light fitting that fits in with the style of our home; stainless steel wall lights for a modern home, for instance, and wrought iron wall lights for a traditional one. In gardens as in fashion, you can’t go wrong with black. Black wrought iron wall lights will suit homes of any style or period.
The latest buzz in garden illumination is LED garden lights; LED is such a flexible light source that you can find it powering everything from LED pool lights, porch lights, brick lights, porch lights, and bollard lights. Of course, if LED is not your thing, these light fittings are available with standard light sources too.
For real class, you could even install your very own garden lamppost; the beauty of lamp posts is their height, which is ideal for security lighting. Once again, you will find exactly the style your home needs, although it’s hard to resist Victorian lamp-posts, whatever era your home was built.
Whether you’re in the market for simple patio wall lights, or are planning to go the whole hog, with pond lights and deck lights; in fact even if you’re just looking for a bollard light for the garden shed, you will be amazed at the difference garden lighting makes to your home and your life.
