Outdoor Walkway Lighting

Pathway or walkway lighting is a popular feature to increase safety and security around your house. When you drive your way home at night than you will notice that there are quite some lighting options available. Although there are much more options to light your walkway, low voltage lighting and solar lighting are your best options to consider. High voltage lighting is also an option but in most cases you will need a permit to use it and installation is also very hard to do.

Increase Safety on your Walkway

Why should you illuminate your walkway if you already have other outdoor lighting in place? Especially if you have a longer walkway than proper lighting is essential and not doing so can cause accidents or damage. Not seeing where you are going might cause you to go off track and tremble on something which can do some serious injury to your body. You would also not like to step on your newly bought plants and flowers because stepping on them is almost the same as killing them. Safety around your house starts with lighting all dark areas and this also means your walkway. If it is just a single long road than you can use the lights to guide you on it, but if you also have some steps around your house than it is very important to put a light on each step in order to prevent accidents from happening. It is not only you who could get harmed, but also your children, neighbors or friends.

Another reason why you would want outdoor walkway lighting is because of security reasons. Dark areas are excellent places to hide or plan a burglary and you can simply reduce the chance on this from happening by having your house properly lighted.

As stated, you basic options are solar lights or low voltage lighting and here we are going to review what is the best option and what type of walkway lighting fixture is the best to purchase and some other walkway lighting ideas.

Solar Walkway Lighting Options

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Although solar powered lighting is a relative new energy source it has rapidly become a very popular way to light your home exterior. The reason for this is mainly because it is very easy to install. You don't have to work with wires, transformers or electricity, all you have to do is stick them in the ground and they will work. Most types of solar walkway lights are place on a pole/stick which you have to put in the ground, but there are also solar led lights which you have to place directly on your walkway.

The disadvantage of using solar lighting is that the light they emit will always be of lesser intensity compared to low voltage lighting. They are charged by the sun and once it gets dark there battery will discharge all night. This means that later in the night the intensity of your solar walkway lighting will drop. You can overcome this problem by choosing for outdoor low voltage lighting or solar led lights.

Solar Led Lights

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Solar powered led lights are much more efficient than other types of solar lighting. When they are properly charged by the sun they will emit light continuously the entire night and the quality of the light is almost comparable to using low voltage lighting. If you consider led lights than you will have 3 options. In ground led lights are to be placed on the ground directly on your walkway. They are made of strong materials which makes them durable and allows you to stand on them without breaking them. The disadvantage of using them is that you might tremble on them if you are not watching where you are going. You can prevent this in buying leveled solar led lights. You have to dig some holes in your walkway but once they are installed it will look like they were born there.

There are also led lights available which you can stick in to the ground, just like non-led solar lighting. Be sure to check what type of lighting you are buying and if lighting intensity is important, be sure to buy led walkway lighting.

Low Voltage Walkway Lighting

Although solar led lights will already be an improvement, they are still not of the same quality as low voltage walkway lighting. The big con is that they are a lot more difficult to install compared to solar lighting. In order to make them work you have to wire them all and connect them to a transformer which is connected to the electricity network.

If you have a small to medium sized walkway than there are starter sets available which could be very useful. You don't have to buy the wiring and transformer yourself because all is complete in the starter set. However, if you have a larger walkway than starter sets might not be sufficient to cover your entire walkway. Your best option would than be to buy the separate items yourself. The rule of thumb is that the transformer can only handle a certain amount of watts. Every led light or bulb will use a certain amount of watt and the higher this amount the brighter the light will be. Low voltage walkway lighting comes mostly in 20 or 30 watt and if you would like to use 6 lights than you would either need a transformer of 120 watt or 180 watt. It is better to buy a transformer that can handle more watts because it also has to correct the output because of the wiring. If you are using much wiring than you want to buy a stronger transformer. Read this article for more information about how to light your walkway.

Make sure to compare all your options before you decide to buy your outdoor walkway lighting. All options will produce quality light but it is all a matter of personal taste and how much light you want installed.

Related Websites

Path Lighting and Walkway Lights

May 7, 2009 ... Light up your Garden Path & Walkway with Low Voltage Landscape lights. Visit BackyardCity.com to see our extensive selection of Outdoor ...

Installing Outdoor Low-Voltage Lighting Tutorial

Low voltage lighting is simple to install and offers many benefits including ambiance, safety and security. They can be used to illuminate a walkway or to ...

How to install walkway lighting | Video « Wonder How To

Install walkway lighting |► Joe Sherinski wants to light-up your life. He'll show us a simple do-it-yourself lighting project that will make your home look ...

How to Install Low-Voltage Outdoor Lighting

Learn how to design and install outdoor low-voltage lighting; includes details on walkway lights, deck lights and spot lights. ...

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Tagged as: led walkway lighting, outdoor walkway lighting, outdoor walkway lights, solar walkway lighting, walkway lighting ideas