How much festoon lighting you need depends on a few key factors like.
- The pattern you hang your lights
- The distance you want to cover
- And how bright your area to be
Festoon lighting is mood and decorative lighting. This means you want the lights to make your outdoor area beautiful, not ugly.
If you want to put heaps of festoon lights up, then you better make sure you can dim them.
Take Note Of The Lumens Of The Bulbs Not The Watts
Light brightness is measured in lumens, not watts. If you put a heap of bright lights up and you can’t dim them, you’ve got a problem. And that problem is bright lights penetrating your eyeballs.
The brightest bulb we have is 285lms. Get 20 of the overhead and you’ve got plenty of light. The good thing is all our bulbs are dimmable.
Here’s A Pattern To Consider Lighting Your Outdoor Area
If you’ve got a big area you want to light. You can run the lights the full length, or you can come in from the ends and start your lights.
Another way to hang your lights is, instead of going the full width of the area, you come in X distance from each side and centre your lights.
Why do this?
You don’t need as many lights to light your area. And lights centred, and run in a nice pattern look beautiful.
Here’s an example:
This area is 15m long and 9m wide, and there’s timber rafters supporting the structure.
We came in 2m from each side, then ran a zig-zag pattern at 2m intervals with gave 7 cross-overs in total.
This put the lights right over the centre of the outdoor entertaining area where the table was.
When you look up and see the lights and the pattern it looks beautiful.
What Has The Most Effect On Your Outdoor Area?
The colour of the light the bulbs puts out has a significant impact on your outdoor area.
If the bulbs are too bright or too white you get a sterile looking area.
The Best Bulbs For Your Festoon Lights…
Are a warm white 2200K. These put out a beautiful warm white ambient glow.
Working Out How Much Festoon Lighting You Need
Measure the distance from the power point to where you want to start your lights.
Then measure the area you want to put your lights.
If you hang your lights without attaching them to a support cable, you lose some of your total cable meters in sag.
If you need help working out how much festoon lighting you need, give me a call or contact me and I’ll help you out.