Garden Lights
Garden lights have gone up in the world in the last year or two. As landscapers wanted to bring something to their garden after the sun had set it seemed sensible to look at lighting. Prior to this garden lighting was functional and little attention was paid to the asthetic purpose of lighting the garden at night. It was usually to help keep unsavoury characters away from your home or to light a path or garage drive. It was function over form. But now you can buy garden lights in all colors and brightness to really bring your home to life in the evening.
You can hire a professional to plan your lighting and they usually carry a laptop around with them to illustrate their plans and how it will look when finished. Professionals are great and will almost certainly do a wonderful job and make your home look beautiful in the evening. However, they are very expensive and should only be used if you can afford it. Its more fun to plan it yourself anyway and the satisfaction you get when you stand back and admire your work is priceless.
Ideally, you should plan your garden light layout when landscaping your garden. The reason for this is that the installation of garden lighting will involve laying cables leading from the house which could severely disrupt your garden. If you already have a well created garden you will be loathe to start digging it up. If this is the case then solar garden lights are probably the best solution for you.
When planning the lights for your garden try to keep things subtle. There is no need to install a lot of bright lights unless you are planning to light up the exterior of your home in which case some brighter light may be useful near to the building. But away from the house you should try to include a variety of colors and brightnesses to bring out the foliage around it.
Similar to the method of using lighting within your home to accentuate features you should aim to do the same with your garden lights. If you have a pond or even better an oriental koi pond then you can really beautify the space with some well chose lighting.
Garden lights dont have to be expensive. With a few well chosen pieces well placed to accentuate eye catching features within the garden can really bring the space to life in the evenings which you can really enjoy on the warm summer nights.
