Since LED garden lighting started parking its tanks on the low voltage outdoor lighting lawn just a few years ago, it has grown dramatically in popularity. Outdoor LED lighting allows you to realize amazing after dark effects and yet it is also very easy to install, cheap to purchase, incredibly cheap to run and quite safe for children, animals and plants.
Most outdoor LED lighting, like traditional garden lighting, typically uses a 12v DC low voltage power supply from a main transformer installed indoors. There are similarities end though, because LED garden lights use only 10% as much electricity as traditional incandescent bulbs or halogen lamps.
The reason is simple; LED light is produced by exciting electrons to emit photons (light), whereas traditional light bulbs burn a filament which gives off an incidental amount of light along with all the heat. These are fundamentally different approaches to the process of producing light. LEDs are carefully engineered to emit light and nothing else; incandescent bulbs are often small heaters that emit light only as a by-product.
For garden lighting then, outdoor LED lights are ideal because of these properties of running cool and using negligible amounts of electricity. It is also worth mentioning that most LED garden lights have an effective lifespan of a decade or more, thereby reducing maintenance requirements.
LED garden lights come in all manner of guises. The most common colors are white and blue, but other colors are also available as well as color changing LED lights. One of the most noticeable characteristics of LED garden lights is how crisp and pure they look. The colors tend to be extremely vibrant with an almost gemstone quality – sapphire blue, emerald green, ruby red, citrine yellow, diamond white. Although it is possible to use filters and diffusing screens to tone things down, which in itself opens up further effects and design ideas.
As well as variety in colors and brightness, outdoor LED lights are also available in any number of different fixtures. LED floodlights, wall wash effects, rock lights, embedded patio and deck lights, bollards, lanterns, spikes, pagodas, integrated in garden ornaments and submerged in ponds. Just for starters. Two of the most common choices through outdoor LED spotlights and LED deck lights.
LEDs are well suited as garden spotlights since LED light designs be directional by nature. They also often have a good Color Rendering Index which measures how lifelike and vibrant the area being lit shows. The items to check when choosing LED garden spotlights are: brightness (even a 1w LED in a dark garden is surprisingly bright); beam angle (how spread out or focussed the light is); and "color", meaning both the actual color (as in red or blue etc) and the "color temperature" (how "cool" or "warm" the light appears).
LED deck lights are one of the most versatile forms of garden lighting available. You can use them as intended, flush fitted into decking boards, or experiment with many other applications. LED deck lights are obviously highly robust and capable to withstand quite a pounding (literally) as well as extremes of weather; they're also cheap, lightweight and simplicity itself to install.
Just about any piece of wood, or indeed any solid material, that you can drill a hole into and feed cables through can have LED deck lighting fitted into it. For cheap and easy pathway lighting for example, just hammer in some short wooden stakes at suitable intervals, drill apertures to accept whatever size, shape or color deck light you want to use, feed the cables along the ground (I use old garden hose pipe buried just below the surface) and that's about it. You can fit LED deck lights pointing up, down, sideways, any way you please in fact.
