If you want to look out the window of your house at night and admire your beautifully lit garden, then you’ll want to include garden spike lights in your garden lighting plan.
Why?
Because, garden spike lights are a super-versatile light that give your garden a beautiful lighting effect.
What Are Garden Spike/Stake Lights?
Garden spike lights are lights with a spike on them; what you do is push the spike into the ground to hold the light in position. You can then adjust the head of the light and make it shine in the direction you want the light.
What Is A Spike Light Used For?
Garden spike lights are used to light up trees, plants, features, walls, decks, rocks, gardens, and just about anything you want outdoors.
Where Do You Put Spike Lights?
Okay…
This is the fun part, let’s take a look at seven ways you can use garden spike/stake lights in your garden. These seven ideas are in no particular order.
ONE: Light Trees
A tree turns into a beautiful night-time feature when you light it. And yes, with a couple of garden spike lights, you can light up trees of all different sizes and shapes.
Here’s what you’ll want to consider: lighting trees…
How To Light A Tree
When you light a tree, focus the light on the trunk and branches, not the leaves. Because it’s the trunk and branches that create the feature at night, and this is what gives you a stunning lighting effect.
You Can Mount Spike Lights In The Ground Or The Tree
The great thing about garden spike lights is you can take the spike off and mount the light further up the tree.
Why do this?
Because it puts light higher up into the tree so you can light branches further up, and this creates a beautiful lighting effect.
Here’s what else you can do…
When you mount a spike light higher up the tree, you can shine the light back down to light the tree. This gives a totally different lighting effect to when the light shines up at the tree.
TWO: Lighting Paths
Spike lights are great for lighting paths, and there are a couple of ways you can go about lighting paths with your garden spike lights.
Option 1: You can spike the light into the ground and shine the light across the path.
Option 2: You can install small posts along your path. The post could be 600mm high. Then, you mount the spike light to the small post and direct the light down onto the pathway.
With a quality spike light, the spike comes off, and a flat mounting plate can be used to attach your spike light to your 600mm high post. Because the light is now higher, your light beam is wider and shines down. What this means is that your dark path is safe to stroll along at night, and it looks beautifully lit up.
THREE: Lighting Driveways
To light a driveway with spike lights, you use the same idea as option two above for lighting paths.
You could space a small post along your driveway. The post height could be 800mm to 1 meter high. Using the mounting plate option for the garden spike light, you mount the light to the top of your post and shine the light down at the driveway surface.
You could stagger the post on opposite sides of the driveway. Or have all the posts on the same side.
Another option is, if you have trees along your driveway, garden spike lights could get mounted in the trees so the light shines down onto the driveway to light it up.
FOUR: Lighting Features In Your Garden
If you’ve got some type of feature in your garden and you’ve been scratching your head and wondering how to light it up.
Here’s your solution…
Garden spike lights are great for lighting features. Suppose you’ve got a statue, rock wall, animal feature, really any type of feature at all. With a garden spike light, you can turn that feature of yours into a beautiful nighttime feature.
The great thing is that you can play with the positioning of the light and see what works best. Put the light in close to the feature, then take a look that night and see what you think. The next night, shift the light further away from the feature and see how a wider beam looks on it. This is an easy way to see what you like best.
FIVE: Light Small Shrubs
You can light plants of any size with garden spike lights. The thing is, you don’t want to light every plant in your garden.
Why?
Because garden lighting is not about creating a day-light effect, it is more like art. Shadows and darker areas add to the lighting effect.
When you’re lighting smaller plants and shrubs, you may have to play around a little, working out the best position for the light. With some plants, they look better when the light is in close, and with other plants, you’ll find it looks better when the light is moved further away.
SIX: Gutter Mount And Light Gardens Below
Garden spike lights can get mounted to gutters so the light shines down onto the garden bed and plants below. Done right, this creates a beautiful lighting effect.
Why shine the light down and not up at the plant?
Because if all your garden lighting is set up to shine up plants and trees, it looks one-dimensional and boring.
When you have up-and-down lighting in your garden, it adds depth and layers to your lighting. What this means is that your garden looks beautiful.
SEVEN: Light Post And Walls
Timber posts look great light up at night, and so do fences and walls.
If you wanted to light some timber posts, you’d go for a garden spike light with a 38-degree beam. With the light positioned at the bottom of the post, the narrow 38-degree beam shoots the light straight up most of the post.
Now, let’s look at walls…
A wall with any type of plant or creeper growing along it looks great lit up at night.
Brick walls and sandstone rock walls all look amazingly lit up at night, and you can easily do this using garden spike lights.
Those are seven ways you can use garden lights.
Here are extra great details to help you light your garden.
How To Install Garden Spike Lights?
Here’s the thing when it comes to installing garden spike lights.
Not every single plant in your garden needs to get lit up. Your garden shouldn’t look lit up like Las Vegas.
When you’re trying to work out where I should place my garden lights, here’s how professional garden light installers go about it.
Look at the main viewing angles of your garden.
What am I talking about?
When you sit in your outdoor entertaining area, you can view your garden. That’s one viewing angle.
You might get a view of your garden from one of the main windows in your house. That’s another viewing angle.
Now, when it comes to installing your garden lights, position lights on the plants and trees you see from your main view angles.
**Note you are better off to under light an area than over light it.
How To Wire Garden Spike Lights?
With garden light installations I do for customers, I use the IP68 Waterproof joiners sold in our online shop. They make it quick and easy to wire up garden spike lights. And the best part is, they are IP68 which is the highest waterproof rating you can get.
In this video, I demonstrate how to prep your wire and how to use the IP68 joiners.
There are other ways to join garden lights: cut, twist wires together, and then heat-shrink. However, I’ve found the IP68 waterproof joiners are super-easy to use. And if you ever need to change a light out, it’s quick and easy to undo the joiner and wire a new light in.
Beam Angle Of Garden Spike Lights
Hey listen…
This is important because garden spike lights can shine a light beam out from a few different angles.
For example, you can get a beam of:
- 38-degrees
- 60-degrees
If you wanted a wider light beam because you had something you wanted to light that was wide, then you’d go for a light with a 60-degree beam.
The majority of the spike lights we sell have a 38-degree beam. And we also stock 60-degree lights as well.
If you’re unsure what angle beam would work best in your garden, and I’ll help you.
If you’d love some help with your garden light plan, get in touch with me.