Garden Lighting

Bunny Guinness solves your gardening problems

What are the benefits of installing a lighting system and should one employ a professional designer?

A lighting scheme will increase the practical and visual aspects of your garden considerably and bring it to life at a time of the day when many busy people have a chance to appreciate it.

Calling in a specialist who knows the myriad range of fittings and lighting effects will allow you to spend money wisely on a scheme that has maximum impact.

Lucy Martin, a lighting designer for John Cullen Lighting www.johncullenlighting.co.uk advises that less is always more. Concentrate on lighting individual parts and keep in mind that creating shadow is as important as light. She warns against over-use of coloured lights: it is easy to overdo them.

What are LEDs best for?

LEDs, or light emitting diodes, are the tiny, twinkly lights that are very popular now and much cheaper than they used to be.

Their advantage is their long life and low power consumption. You only need to change them after 15 years or so. You could form a pattern work in paving by omitting a brick or sett every so often. Or follow the example of Burghley House in Stamford, Lincs, and have them set in wooden posts to highlight a visitor path.

Should one use high- or low-voltage lights and what is the difference?

The best arrangement is to mix high- and low-voltage systems.

High voltages, of 50 to 400 volts, which can be found in sodium lamps, give off an orange colour which is warm and atmospheric, perfect to lightly 'wash' and warm stonework. Metal halide bulbs lend a bluer light, which is superb for playing up multi-stem silver birches.

Cables carrying high voltages should be protected in an armoured or sealed conduit. All connections need to have waterproof housings and a residual current device (or trip).

The light from low-voltage fittings is much brighter and whiter and works especially well with green foliage and stems. You can connect the lights to dimmer switches to allow for mellow tones.

A disadvantage of low- voltage lighting is the further the light is placed from the transformer, the thicker the cable and the light becomes dimmer. To counter this, run trunking and transformers at low levels around your garden walls and hide the network with clever planting.

What are the rules governing proximity lights?

Since April 2006, all external fitted lights must be fitted with passive infra-red presence sensors, so they do not waste power by being left on. They can also be fitted with an override switch.

It may be worth considering time clocks, too, so all lights switch off at a certain time.

What are the pros and cons of spike lights?

Spiked fittings work well in simple schemes and are extremely flexible. They are usually low-voltage and come with two metres of cable, which allows you to rejig their arrangement and effect as your garden grows and changes.

Exterior lighting is one of the least expensive, but more dramatic modifications that you can make around your property and commonly easy and safe to set up, commanding only a few tools and some basic D I Y ability. Someone wants to add lighting to their front walkway and garden, but they dont have an outdoor outlet on the front of their home.

Outdoor lighting can be stunning in its beauty and offers a safe, secure and welcoming enviroment. Established properly the appeal that it produces is unchallenged. The employment of solar garden lighting can dramatically increase the pleasing ingredient of any landscape project.

Landscape lighting is a basic improvement that will make a big difference in the safety and not forgetting the security of your household as well the visual appearance at night and is safer to run than traditional mains lighting. Out-of-door lighting is normally advisable, but specially around water features, which present a distinct danger after dusk and is excellent for highlighting walkways. As an accessory exterior lighting is as utilitarian as it is ornamental, improving the safety and security of the property, because the homeowner and family can move about their property in safely at nightime.

One potential drawback is that they sometimes only give off a low glow that lights a comparatively small area. Solar outdoor lighting can be supplied in a variety of styles from assorted producers offering solar garden decor that befit your style. Outdoor lighting is the ideal product for solar powered, wireless style lights.That said ,they must be placed in an area, which enjoys a lot of sunlight during sunny periods. Even so, the PV panel utilized to charge the battery must be in a location where it will receive large amounts of direct sunlight. It is a quick easy choice that can transform your yard decor or landscape. Now that production costs have improved and price tags are tumbling , solar lighting has become the hottest segment in the garden industry. Solar outside lighting supplies many opportunities for you to include into your gardening project including pathway, driveway lights, accent lights, lanterns, fountains, and spotlights.

Try playing around with your timing and using different set-ups to alter the ambience over the evening for instance set for evening, not too dimmed, and with a ruddy orange ambiance. Preparation of footings for lighting fixtures, setting up of fixture standards, or instalation of empty conduit for future landscape lighting are projects that should be planned ahead of establishing your exterior lighting.