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Including battery-powered, mains-connected and smart lighting options. road glide lights
Garden lighting is varied, with options ranging from festoon lights to high-quality, wall-mounted lamps that cement your garden’s status as an outdoor living space.
Outdoor lighting can make a garden more homely, providing ideal illumination for al fresco furnishings such as a bistro set or rattan garden furniture. And on balmy summer nights, the right lights will keep garden parties and gatherings aglow.
One of the most important factors to think about when choosing garden lighting is the power source.
Mains-powered outdoor lights tend to be bright and built to last, so they’re ideal for lighting outdoor hangout spots long-term, or highlighting garden features that deserve to be seen. For instance, you could position a few around your outdoor furniture set, so you can feel at home after sundown.
If you have a canopy or pergola, there are ceiling suspended options, and you can also find plenty of outdoor floor lamps that deliver an indoor-outdoor living vibe, making a lifestyle statement as well as adding illumination. Do bear in mind that this type of lighting needs to be safely connected to mains electricity.
Battery-powered outdoor lights usually have a gentler glow. They can create ambience without requiring you to plug them in. Since battery-powered lights don't need to be near a power source and won't trail wires across your lawn, you can use them more freely, lighting up spaces such as flowerbeds, hedges, pathways, or wherever your creativity takes you.
Battery-powered lights also tend to be cheaper than mains-powered lights, so you can use them without quite so much concern about weather damage. Of course, you’ll need to replace or recharge the batteries when they run out of power, so keep some spare ones handy.
Some garden lights power themselves using solar energy. For some shining examples, see our dedicated recommendations on the best solar-powered garden lights.
To extend your garden lighting scheme throughout your whole outdoor space, you’ll need a combination of mains-powered and battery-powered lights. So we’ve included both types, spanning a variety of lighting forms including festoon lights, wall-mounted lamps and freestanding lamps.
With 50 spherical LED bulbs, these cheerful string lights are a high-impact, low-cost option for lighting your garden. The bulbs run at a mellow 0.2W, so this is one mains-powered lighting solution that won’t make too much of a mark on your energy bills.
Better still, the lights run at a safe, low voltage of 24V, making them a more secure choice for families.
If you aspire to elevate your outdoor lighting setup, we can recommend this professional-grade festoon lighting from specialist retailer, lights4fun.
The warm glowing bulbs are ideally suited to lighting up garden rooms and outdoor celebrations, and they can be connected to other lighting of the same type to provide wider coverage. The wiring comes in black or white.
With its bubbled glass globe case, this outdoor light happily walks the line between traditional and modern style at a very purse-friendly price point.
The light is dimmable, so you can adjust the brightness to your liking.
Here you can connect multiple sets of lights up together for a longer display, and with a festoon pole to hang the lights from, you can zigzag them across your lawn rather than simply draping them over your fence.
Both the bulbs and the wire are weatherproof.
With its beautiful, earthy palette, this standing lamp would look right at home in a bohemian boudoir.
It's actually made for your outdoor space, with moderate protection against dust and water splashes, and a rattan shade to match your garden furniture.
This is a good, strong light that you can use around a patio or porch to illuminate the space.
The downlighter/uplighter effect is very sophisticated and, as pictured, features multicolour capacity as well as a neutral white light mode. Very smart.
The Canove wall light serves sophisticated continental vibes, via its cylindrical glass shade and geometric metal cage.
These design elements provide a fine balance between visibility and aesthetic nuance, while the cage offers a little protection against impacts from errant birds, toys and other airborne threats.
This three-bulb hanging lamp is top of the list for style points, and has been designed to be wired into the roof of a watertight outdoor space, such as a covered patio or garden room.
The three bulbs can be set at various heights, so you can adjust the layout of the rattan shades.
Illuminate your driveway, porch or pathway with a couple of these smart post lamps.
The steel is galvanised for protection against rust, which makes this a smart choice for coastal dwellers.
These up-and-downlights strike a brilliant balance between the industrial and the decorative. Use them to brighten up either side of your home's front entrance, or fix several along the side of the house or by the patio.
Their two-directional lighting means these fixtures can be positioned at a relatively low height, even when used as a porch light.
Those interested in smart home tech will have heard of Philips' Hue. But did you know the brand has a range of garden lighting to complement its interior bulbs?
This set of three spotlights can be attached to fences or placed snugly in a corner, adding some targeted mood lighting to your space. The lights can be set to any colour, so you can create looks far more adventurous than anything achievable with traditional bulbs. There's also a good range of pre-sets to choose from on the Hue app.
Offering an incredible 80 metres of illumination, these mains-powered fairy lights can spread a sprinkling of whimsy around gardens great and small.
Their flexible wire is perfect for winding around branches, although the lights look great strung out, too. Use the bundled-in remote control to adjust the brightness and choose between eight different lighting modes.
Charge it up indoors, unplug it and take it outside to light up your garden. The Philips Hue Go is the brand's first battery-powered lamp for mixed indoor-outdoor use.
It's a superb opening foray, with up to 48 hours of battery life on a single charge, rapid setup, and the host of options we've come to expect from Hue lighting, including configurable colour settings and dimming. While the lamp is sold as waterproof, we wouldn't necessarily leave it out in the rain.
These battery-powered lantern string lights add an impactful, celebratory backdrop to your outdoor space. With 30 LED-lit lanterns, there’s plenty of lighting to crisscross over a table or decorate a cosy nook.
Bear in mind that these are not the brightest of lights, and we wouldn’t advise keeping them outside during very windy weather.
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