Hello again,

It's now the beginning of autumn, the traditional time to look at installing garden and landscape lighting. Garden lighting is a fantastic medium and can be used in so many different ways to create a range of fabulous effects. It can be used all year round creating views from the house and to create a lovely atmosphere when sitting or eating outside in the evening. It can be used for practical purposes to guide you around the garden or for security. It can be used to create longer views or a backdrop to the garden, to link in with the "borrowed landscape" and to add a focal point in a view. It can even be used to guide the eye away from a less desirable view, something that cannot be done during daylight hours. Why not light an individual sculpture, illuminate a pond or water feature, silhouette architectural shapes or to build ambient light levels around a dining terrace - the choices are endless.

There are also many choices when it comes to what type of lighting to install. Traditionally, gardens have been lite with halogen light fittings which were able to provide warm tones of light, good light levels at a reasonable cost. However, over the last five years LED lighting has now become a viable alternative to halogen lighting and has a number of significant benefits including low heat, very long lamp life and even a colour-change option.

When it comes to the fittings themselves, the choice is huge; uplights, downlights, wall lights, flood lights, aluminium, copper and stainless steel fittings, remote control, colour change LED, strip lighting etc - the list goes on and getting some advice can save a lot of time and hassle. More recently, solar lighting has flooded onto the market and in theory, seems to be a good idea ie a garden light that doesn't need and switching, cabling or labour to install it. In practice though, solar lighting still cannot produce enough light to be useful in a garden lighting context. They can be used along a path edge as way-markers but cannot realistically be considered as part of a garden lighting scheme.

Most importantly though, when having a lighting system installed, is to ensure it is installed properly and the component parts are professional quality, durable and robust. Don't be tempted to buy cheap products because they will prove to be a false economy and they will fail, probably much sooner than you think. At Waterwell, we source and test the right product for your garden and we ensure you can rely on every component including the switching, the cables, junction boxes, transformers and the light fittings. After all, there is no point in investing in good quality light fittings if one of the components between the house and the light is inferior because any lighting system is only as reliable as the weakest component.


That said, it doesn't mean you have to spend a fortune buying the most expensive light fittings, you can achieve fantastic results with entry-level light fittings but if you wish to "go the extra mile" and upgrade to superior fittings then the choice is yours.

If you would like to discuss garden lighting then email Nick Ryan and he will gladly help you.

Until next time...