Indoor and Outdoor Lights Guide

Outdoor Solar Lights

Choosing Exterior Solar Lights

A lot of people are going green when they install new outdoor lighting fixtures around their homes.  This may or may not apply to you, but outdoor solar lights should be something you consider for use around your house.  They can save you money, are very easy to install and move, and provide a very nice, soft lighting effect for the landscaping and walkways in your yard.  As outdoor lights go, they are a great utility player.


Probably the most commonly seen kind of solar lights are the kind that push into the ground using a stake to hold each light in place.  You'll usually see these spaced evenly along either side of the sidewalk leading up to the front door of a house.  These can also be placed along the edges of driveways or retaining walls next driveways.  Honestly, because of their extreme portability and ease of installation, these lights can go just about anywhere.  Some people even use them for edging around decorative planting beds that they want to highlight during the evening hours as well as in the daylight.  This type of lighting makes it possible to illuminate beds or decorative elements such as ponds that might be too far removed from an electrical source to make lighting them practical otherwise.

Solar lighting fixtures have improved over recent years.  The solar cells built into each unit have become more efficient at collecting the energy of the daytime sunlight which results in better light production during evening hours when the photocells are triggered by the increasing darkness.  Newer outdoor solar lights can even function after cloudy days.  The illumination provided by these solar lights is softer and more subdued than that provided by traditional electric lights.  If you're looking for very bright outdoor lights, you may want to pass on using this option and go for flood lights or traditional, plug in style string lighting.  You can also use this option, as a type of accent lighting along with some other type of outdoor light fixtures.

Solar outdoor string lights are available in a wide array of colors to suit your personal tastes and landscaping needs.  My neighbor just put some in this weekend that are multi-colored.  They are in a pattern of green,blue, white and red.  They do not put out a lot of light, but they do look nice in the arrangement he has chosen.  They give the impression of over-sized outdoor Christmas lights with their soft glow.

You can shop around for these lights and look for bargains, but most likely they are going to end up costing more than traditional outdoor lights that plug into a socket (this may vary by region).  This higher initial cost however, may be offset by taking into consideration the long-term savings as these lights store the energy from naturally occurring sunlight day after day.

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