During the summer months, we all want to get the absolute most out of our back garden – and that means that we sometimes find ourselves sitting outdoors with friends and family until long after the sun has set!
Of course, we spend plenty of time making sure that our gardens look great during the day, mowing the lawn, planting flowers and investing in high-quality garden furniture. However, if we’re going to make the most of those warm August evenings, we’ll need to look into some stylish outdoor lighting solutions, too.
Here are just five of our tips to help you pick out the very best outdoor lighting for your garden.
Cover All Bases
Having lighting that looks great is one thing, but it’s important to cover all bases when designing your garden lighting – and that means investing in different varieties of outdoor lighting solutions that all serve their own separate purposes.
First is ambient lighting, the type we’ll be discussing the most in this article. These are the lights which give your garden its warm and friendly atmosphere and give off the most light.
Second is accent lighting, which isn’t quite as bright or functional, but adds the most to the theme of the garden overall – fairy lights, candles, etc.
Finally, task lighting, designed to enhance the safety and security of your home and garden. This is a TNS speciality, as we offer a range of different security lights and installation services right here on our site. If you are yet to install any sort of security lighting in your garden, it’s certainly worth getting in touch and finding out about the range of safe and secure lighting solutions that we offer here.
Create A Theme
When decorating the rooms within the interior of your home, you probably have something of a theme in mind as you do it! Maybe this isn’t a bold, obvious theme – perhaps just a style that your design is inspired by. However, having an overall theme will tie together the different elements of any room perfectly.
It’s no different when you are looking to decorate the back garden for the summer! By keeping a particular atmosphere or feel in mind, you’ll be inspired to purchase different styles of furniture, decoration and – of course – lighting to bring it together.
Whether you’re looking to create a cottage-style garden, full of wildflowers and perhaps with a water feature or a contemporary style garden, complete with high-end outdoor dining furniture and a fire pit, there will be different lighting suited to each and every garden style.
Having a theme in mind will make it much easier to search online for inspiration and ideas on the kind of outdoor lighting that will compliment the rest of the design perfectly.
Place Lighting Strategically
In order to properly light your garden, you certainly want to place the different lights strategically to ensure that no part of your garden gets left in the dark.
Fairy lights and hanging lights work great around your patio area, perhaps attached to a wooden or fabric pagoda or parasol, while solar-powered lanterns or miniature lampposts are a great way to light your flowerbeds during the evenings.
One way that many homeowners cover the whole of their garden is by hanging strings of fairy lights from the wall of the house and attaching them to the far fence at the back of their gardens, with the lights hanging above the length of the garden. This works especially well in small gardens, which will not require too many strings of lights in order to achieve this effect.
In lighting the entirety of your garden, you’ll also want to focus on lighting any pathways – this can be done effectively using miniature lanterns or other ornamental lighting. Many solar-powered LED lighting sets of this kind these days either switch on automatically each evening or may even come with their own remote control so that you can light all of them at once.
Use Spotlights
LED spotlights, placed at the foot of different parts of your garden, are a great tool for highlighting the areas of the space that you’d like to draw attention too, such as trees, bushes, plants and water features.
Again, there are plenty of LED lighting solutions on the market today which switch on automatically or come with a remote control to switch every part of the set on or off at once. LED spotlighting sets are also surprisingly affordable, so you can certainly make the most of them!
One thing to note – check what tone of white the lights in LED spotlights are before you spend on them. Bright white lighting can be a little harsh and will take away from the cosy, summer atmosphere that a more orange-toned, warm white will give.
Get Creative!
Lighting works best when it’s used not just strategically, but creatively! There are plenty of creative ideas for the different kinds of lighting and different places that they can be placed. For instance, fairy lights look great when wound around the branches of a tree or lining the roof of a shed or outbuilding.
Interior design is all about having fun with the way everything looks – and the same goes for exterior design, too. Play around with different types of lighting, where it goes and even the colour of the lighting.
It might take some trial and error to get it looking just right, but you’re sure to feel that all the effort was worth it when you get to truly enjoy it this summer.
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