If you’ve had your exterior house lighting system up for a while, you know there’s one unfortunate side effect to it, all of the bugs. Whether you’ve installed outdoor solar lighting or a low voltage system, you’ll end up with all kinds of moths, mosquitoes, and other things that make most people’s skin crawl buzzing around them. For all the positive effects that exterior lighting can give your home and property, this is the one major downside. While you won’t be able to stop the bugs from coming completely, there are several tricks that you can use to reduce the amount of bugs you have to deal with so you can enjoy your nights outside in relative peace and quiet.
The first way that you can cut down on the amount of bugs attracted to your garden lights is by installing yellow bulbs instead of white ones. A great number of the bugs that are attracted to light actually can’t even see yellow light. There will be some that still do but there will be much less attracted to these types of lights. When you’re laying out the plans for your landscape lighting, keep this in mind and install yellower lights where you think people will be gathering the most. Keep the brighter, white lights further away. If you do need bright lights for task lighting, such as if you’re planning on working a barbeque grill, put those lights on a different circuit so that you can turn them off once the task is done while keeping all your other lights on.
These lights can be hard to find at some local stores, but this pack of four compact fluorescent bug light bulbs is a great value. Not only will they cut down on the amount of bugs that are attracted to the gathering areas in your yard, they’re compact florescent, which means that they’re eco-friendly, will last for over 10,000 hours, and will plug into all your existing light fixtures.
Another way to cut down on the amount of bugs that are attracted to the lights around your house is to install a bug zapper several yards away from the main gathering areas on your deck and patio. The bug zapper pictured below, is very highly rated and can kill any bugs within an acre that are attracted to its ultraviolet light. This includes, but is not limited to mosquitoes, moths, and biting flies. It is designed to deliver a serious shock to the bugs, but also not to clog up with their remains and has a protective enclosure to make sure that while mosquitoes will get a nasty shock, birds, dogs, and your family members won’t. It is truly one of the best bug zappers on the market today.
There’s no way to completely get rid of all the bugs that are going to be attracted to your exterior lights. However, there are several things that you can do to greatly reduce the amount of insects that you get flying around your patio, garden, or deck. By installing yellow lights and buying a bug zapper, you’ll be more likely to enjoy a quiet night outside instead of running inside swatting away mosquitoes the entire time.
