Your garden is an important part of the overall look and feel of your home. Garden lights contribute to the aesthetics and design of your landscaping. There are various types of garden lights, including LED, halogen, and solar lights. Each type will produce a different color of light emitted and use different types and amounts of energy.
For the most efficient in energy consumption, use LED or solar garden lights. LED garden lighting use bulbs that cost more than average bulb initially, but last much longer so in the end they are cheaper to use. An LED bulb will last approximately 50,000 hours, which is 50x longer than a traditional incandescent bulb! They also use much less power to work, requiring only a 13-watt bulb to produce 500 lumens, something that requires a 40-watt incandescent bulb.
Of course, if you use solar garden lights, your energy use is zero as well as the cost of bulbs. It is important to note that solar bulbs are never as bright as bulbs that use electricity or batteries to operate and they do require the sun to shine in order to recharge, but they are the most cost effective outdoor garden lights on the market. The energy they collect during the day is typically stored in batteries to be used at night. Solar garden lighting typically uses an LED bulb due to the fact that they can run on such low power. The lights use a photoresistor to detect the change from day to night and switch on automatically. Another benefit of the solar lights is that there is no wire used to connect them. This allows for the greatest versatility in placement and only takes a couple seconds for installation of each unit.
The initial cost of solar and LED garden lights may be more costly upfront, but consider this an investment that will quickly pay itself off in saved energy costs in a season.
