Lighting your backyard is one of the quickest, easiest and cost-effective ways you can instantly give your backyard a mini-makeover, and make it even more beautiful and enjoyable of an evening.
The Aussie backyard has always been a special place where great times are enjoyed, and lifetime memories are formed.
And that’s why the backyard lighting you choose is so important. You want the lights to compliment your backyard, improve it, and make it inviting of an evening.
So how do you get the right lighting?
Let’s take a look at…
A few critical backyard lighting elements and smart ideas for choosing lighting
Know Your Kelvins
You may have seen the letter K on a light bulb, or light bulb box. What’s the K stand for?
That K stands for Kelvins. Lighting has a scale and it’s called Kelvins. You can see the chart below and how the light changes colour over the scale.
As you can see, the light goes from very warm white to surgical room white.
A light that is 2200K, puts out a beautiful warm white ambient light.
Cool white which you probably have in your kitchen would sit from 4000K-7000K.
Watts
Watts is the power the light draws to run it. The great thing about LED bulbs is they use fewer watts then the old type bulbs of halogen and incandescent.
The old school halogen and incandescent bulbs use high watts. You don’t need a high watt LED light to get the same amount of light as a high watt halogen or incandescent bulb. For outdoor light in a backyard 1-7watts is the highest watts you need in your backyard.
Lumens
Light brightness is measured in Lumens, not watts. You just learnt about watts above. When you’re looking at outdoor lights make sure you find the lumens of the particular light you’re looking at.
For example…
If a light was 200lms that would be fairly bright. If a light was 800lms that would be super-bright and probably way too bright for backyard lighting.
And yes, choosing the exact light brightness for a backyard can be slightly challenging at times. Depending on what type of outdoor lighting you put in, there might be a dimmable option you can get.
Remember outdoor lighting for a backyard is mood lighting. Unless you’re looking to light your backyard like a football field.
Dimmable Bulbs
With dimmable LED bulbs in your backyard you get to choose the exact amount of light for your outdoor space. If you were to put Festoon Lighting in your outdoor entertaining space then you’d definitely want dimmable bulbs.
Okay…
You now know 4 important ingredients when looking at backyard lights.
- Kelvins
- Watts
- Lumens
- Dimmable
When you know these four elements you have a great understanding of light and you’ll then make great choices for your backyard outdoor lighting.
Now we’ll look at a few of the outdoor lighting ideas for your backyard
Garden Lights
With some well-placed garden lights, your backyard gets turned into a beautiful night time haven.
Garden spike lights are a great option because you can use them to light trees, shrubs and other small plants.
With the Fusion Lighting garden light series, you can unscrew the spike part from the light, then attach the light base to a fence or wall.
Installing Your Garden Lights
Make the job quick and easy for yourself. With our garden light series, the lights join together with an easy-join system. You simply push the cables together and do up the thread for a water-proof seal. This means, there’s no wiring and soldering each light in, and you don’t need a heap of tools and parts.
Fairy Lights
It’s easy to turn any dull, lacklustre or dark outdoor spot into a visual delight using fairy lights. You can put fairy lights in trees, hedges, gardens, wrapped around poles, or strung across your backyard. Fairy lights are great outdoor lighting.
Get commercial grade fairy lights. Why?
Because they last for years and years… and they are rated for outdoor use. Most fairy lights on the market are cheap and rapidly deteriorate within 12 months. Your outdoor lighting must be made for the outdoors.
People call fairy lights string lights as well, maybe because when you see them up they do look like string lights.
Outdoor Lighting Festoon Lights
These are the ultimate lighting outdoor. If you were to use one of these lighting ideas, this is a great place to start.
Hung overhead, the lights make your outdoor space beautiful and inviting. And with the commercial-grade option, you’ll get a bullet-proof system that lasts you for years.
Now you’ve seen the best lighting options available, let’s look at a couple of quick ideas that’ll make sure you get the beautiful lighting effect you want.
Backyard Lighting Ideas
For The Best Lighting Effects
Layer Your Lighting
Layering the lighting is a concept very few people know about, or understand how to do it correctly, yet it’s the secret ingredient to creating a beautiful outdoor space.
What is layering the lights?
When you layer the lights, you put lights at different heights and levels, you’re not just putting lights overhead as most people do. This layered effect shows off your outdoor space in a unique and stunning way you could never achieve with lights only placed overhead.
Here’s a few ways you can layer your outdoor lighting…
Lights go under bench seats to light directly under the seat and just out in front of it. Lights go at the front of steps, this looks great it also highlights the step when it’s dark at night.
Lights shining down a fence or brick wall, or lights shining from the ground level up onto the fence or wall. These are just a few ways you can layer your lights for a beautiful effect.
Here are some more lighting ideas…
How To Light Under Bench Seats
When you light under bench seats, or you light your steps or wall areas the lighting is soft and peaceful and gives you light without being overbearing in your eyes.
There are two products you can use here. Strip lights or Neon Flex lighting.
Neon flex lighting is like strip lighting but it’s more robust, longer-lasting and easier to work with. You can get 12V or 24V low voltage strip and neon lighting, and because it’s low voltage you don’t need to be an electrician to install it. If you purchase off a store like us, we have all the parts you’ll need it’s very easy for you to get the job done.
How To Light Your Outdoor Entertaining Area
The entertaining area is your centrepiece, so you want to get the lighting spot on here.
The thing with outdoor entertaining areas is, you want to be able to control your lights, and by control them I mean…you want to be able to dim them, this way you get the perfect amount of light for your place. The best lights for outdoor entertaining areas are Festoon Lights.
Festoon lights are easy to install, look beautiful, you can leave them out permanently… and you can dim them. All our Fusion Lighting festoon lights are commercial grade, water-proof rated and UV resistant which means they’ll last you for years and years. We have 240V Festoon lighting and 24V Low voltage festoon lighting. The low voltage system has Shatter-Proof bulbs.
How To Light Gardens and Fences
Gardens and timber fences, or concrete and brick fences look great when the right lighting gets used. A nice timber fence with a light shining down it looks attractive of an evening. Lights shining onto your garden, plants or trees, bring the garden to the life of an evening.
So, what’s the easiest way to light gardens and fences? Garden spike lights. A good garden spike light becomes more than just a spike light in the ground. Here’s what I mean…
Our Fusion spike light is a spike light, however, when you take the spike part off, you can screw the light base to a fence or wall. Now it’s a wall light shining down and highlighting your beautiful fence. You can use the spike light to light your garden or shine on walkways…. you can even mount them in trees and turn the tree a night-time feature.
Because of the simple plug-and-play system with our garden spike lights, there is no cutting or wiring. You simply push together and do up the thread for a water-tight seal.
If you’ve read this far, you now know more than 90% of people selling lighting products, and you’ll have a tonne of lighting ideas for place. Will all these lighting ideas you’ll nail it when choosing lighting options.
3 Ingredients That Make A Great Outdoor Entertaining Area
Your outdoor entertaining area is an investment in our health. Depending on the home you have, depends on how you’ve set up your outdoor entertaining.
Once you’ve got it set up there’s 3 ingredients I think that make for a great evening. You’ll see there’s no beer or wine on this list of 3, that’s because they are automatically part of a great outdoor entertaining area.
#1 The People
Who you invite into your outdoor entertaining area makes or breaks the evening. Boring, aggressive, me-me-me story people are hard to spend time with. When you’re sitting in your outdoor entertaining area with great friends and family chatting, laughing and playing games life is great.
#2 Music
Put the wrong person in charge of the music and it can quickly turn ugly for people’s ears. I’m old school so when enjoying a few drink’s I love Rock, Jimmy Barnes and Cold Chisel. These old classic songs tell a story and you can sing along.
#3 Lighting
What makes a great outdoor entertaining space is great lighting. Lighting sets the mood and ambiance. Shows off your outdoor entertaining area of an evening and makes the place look beautiful.
You should see an outdoor entertaining area without Festoon lighting then see it with festoon lighting. Worlds apart. The people, the music and the lighting that’s what’s makes a great outdoor entertaining area.
If you need any help call me or send an email and I’ll happily help you out.