Street lights - how to choose

by Umer Adnan
Posted: Mar 10, 2020

Content

Types of street lamps
Options and additional features
How to choose garden lamps and lanterns?
Conclusion

Outdoor lights plays an important role, both purely utilitarian and decorative. The lights installed at the entrance to the house, along the paths, by the fence help to navigate in the dark, scare away uninvited guests. Illumination of flower beds, ponds, fountains and other elements of landscape design gives a summer cottage a highlight, creates a unique cosiness and romantic flair. Exist many different types of outdoor light design and purpose. In this article we will talking about most popular of them.

When choosing fixtures for the street, evaluate the following parameters:

lighting function;
place of installation;
the ability to connect to a source of electricity.
Types of street lights

Depending on the installation location and type of mounting, street lamps are divided into:

Unpaved. They have a sharp leg, are installed in the ground. Used as an element of landscape design to highlight paths, flower beds, facades. To obtain the necessary lighting effect, it is advisable to use not one, but several soil lamps installed at a small distance from each other. When choosing, it is important to pay special attention to the stability of the material from which the lights are made, to adverse weather conditions, ultraviolet light and physical damage.

Recessed. Designed for lighting garden paths, pools and fountains, have a waterproof housing.

Outboard. These are decorative garden lights equipped with a long suspension for attaching to the ceiling. They will look beautiful on the veranda, terrace, in the gazebo.

Facade. Used to illuminate the facade of the house and other buildings. Mounted on the wall, can be rotary or stationary.

Wall mounted. Wall lights look beautiful at the front door, on the walls of the gazebo or porch. Depending on the design of the site, you can choose the lamps "antique" or in a modern style.

Ground lights. As a rule, they have a base in the form of a pillar of various lengths. Street ground lights are designed to illuminate a large area, so their power is higher than other types of lamps. When choosing them, you need to focus on the stability and durability of the material, as well as the economy of energy consumption.

Cantilever lights. They can have a different look and shape, their mounting device unites them. Using the cantilever element, such lamps are fixed on posts or poles, which are purchased separately or are made independently, for example, of wood. They can be installed along the fence or walkway.

Options and additional features

Garden lights are equipped with various types of lamps: incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, LED. You can choose by functionality and find what exactly will look better with your home design.

To control lighting and save energy in the daytime, you can connect regulators with sensors to the lamps, which will automatically turn off your lights at dawn and independently turn them on in the evening. On the facade of the house, the fence, the walls of the outbuildings, you can install spotlights with motion sensors. Firstly, they will react to the appearance of

unauthorized persons on the site and scare away possible intruders, and secondly, they will be useful to thrifty owners.

LED landscape lights can work in conjunction with a controller that will change their brightness, hue, the frequency of inclusion of certain flashlights to create unusual lighting effects.

How to choose garden lamps and lanterns?

Powerful functional lamps are installed in the entrance zone and near the garage, which look simpler than decorative ones and are cheaper, but they are reliable and provide bright floodlights. In such lamps, as a rule, halogen lamps are used.

The most economical streetlights are selected for areas where they will work continuously, at any time of the year, the maximum possible time during the day. As a rule, this is the lighting of the perimeter, entrance area and parking. The most economical of street garden lamps that work on electricity (mains) are LED lamps for summer cottages, as well as equipped with CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps).

If the site is not electrified, or garden lanterns are installed in a remote place where it is difficult to route wires, use stand-alone battery lights, or powered by solar energy.

Decorative streetlights with solar panels do not require consumables in the form of bulbs, but the intensity of their glow depends on solar activity in the daytime when the battery is charging. If the weather is cloudy, the flashlight will shine in the evening weaker and less in time. Cheap garden lanterns are unlikely to last long, so choose high-quality products with a single-crystal silicon photocell and high-brightness LEDs. The disadvantages of stand-alone fixtures include the need for their dismantling for the winter.

Beautiful street lamps, stylized "antique", it is better to use for the veranda, terrace or gazebo, as they give a diffused, dim light.

To illuminate the tracks, usually use built-in lamps, or install column lamps.

Decorative lanterns made in a specific style (for example, wrought iron garden lanterns or Japanese stone) require appropriate surroundings.

Conclusion

Garden lighting should be built carefully, subject to the style of the entire plot. Decorative street lamps that do not match the style of the garden look ugly, just like individual plants or landscape design elements snatched from the dark by bright light. To create coziness and harmony, it is necessary to highlight lighting zones and choose suitable street lamps for them. In our special article, we reveal the basics of landscape lighting design and tell you how to properly draw up a lighting scheme for the site.