There are many popular yet completely false beliefs about landscape lighting that unfortunately lead many people up a blind alley or put them off before they even get started. Let's see if you recognize some of the worst offenders.

There are many subject areas where the professionals have a strong interest in upholding the notion that the subject is better left to them. Outdoor lighting is no exception. But the plain fact is that while it may indeed require experienced and talented designers to create amazing new ideas, there is nothing at all barrng you or anyone else simply adapting these designs to match your own requirements. Simply begin searching for landscape lighting ideas and you'll have all you need.

An extremely common mistake with many (typically non-professional) garden lighting installations is that they're much too bright. Yes, you read that right – too bright. Creating a "night time garden" that looks much the same as its daytime alter-ego but with the lights turned on is missing the point and missing out on the opportunity to utilize garden lighting to its maximum potential.

The follow on to the belief that bright is best is that you can also never have too much. Well actually you can. What makes landscape lighting different from its indoors counterpart is that darkness very much provides the backdrop to the whole effect. Over light it and the effect is ruined.

One of the key attractions of garden lighting is the way you can suppress features normally visible by day and at the same time draw attention to others that may usually go unnoticed. The technique of creating a distinctly different night garden of course depends on zones in the garden remaining dark.

The belief that solar lighting is "free" is as remarkably common as it is remarkably wrong. Apart from the upfront purchase, solar lights work by recharging batteries which have a finite number of recharge cycles before they won't work any more.

Finally there is the Luddite belief that LED landscape lights are not bright enough. Outdoor LED lighting these days is in fact equally as bright as regular incandescent light bulbs, but with many more benefits. For example: very low running costs, virtually no heat, very long lasting, extremely robust and endless variety in colors and effects.

In conclusion:

you don't need to pay costly professionals; brightness is not as it happens important; nor is quantity; solar lighting is not the same as free lighting; LED garden lighting is the future.

If you found this article interesting then you'll want to follow these links to discover more about LED outdoor lights, and low voltage garden lighting.