The glass
Light coming out through the doors and windows does most of the work before a single fitting goes in the garden. Get the blinds and the lamps inside right and half the scheme is done.
Home · After dark
Garden lighting · Warwickshire & the West Midlands
Half past seven to half past nine.
A garden room gets most of its use after dark, so the lighting gets drawn at the same time as the planting. Scroll down and watch one garden's lights come on.
Start at half past seven
Keep scrolling. The clock does the rest.
Scroll slowly
One garden, half past seven to half past nine
It's one photograph of one garden. As you scroll, the last of the daylight goes and the circuits come on in the order a real scheme gets switched on: the glass, the terrace, the festoons, then the borders.
19:30 same garden
21:30 same garden
Nothing in that garden is bright on its own. Most of the light comes out through the glass. The rest is two wall lights over the deck and one string of festoons, on separate switches, and the borders get what spills.
What you just watched
Four circuits, in the order they come on
The terrace
Wherever people actually sit. Two wall lights over the deck in the photograph, warm, shaded, and aimed down at the boards. Never a downlight on the middle of a table.
Festoons
Fixed, tensioned on a wire and run to a switch indoors, not a plug in the shed. They give the garden a ceiling.
The route
Not in that photograph, because the deck meets the door. On most of our gardens there's a walk back to the house, and it gets path lights low enough not to dazzle, and always on the steps.
The borders
Last, once everything else is settled. In the photograph the borders get what spills off the deck. On a fuller scheme, an uplight into a multi-stem tree, a wash through a hedge, a spike behind the grasses so the shadow does the work.
The bit that sounds backwards
Half the job is deciding what to leave dark
A garden lit everywhere has nowhere to look. Your eye needs somewhere to rest, and the dark bits are what make the lit bits read as light.
Warm colour too, the colour a lamp is indoors, so the garden matches what's coming through the kitchen window. And nothing pointed at a neighbour's window.
The practical half
Cable, circuits, and a switch you'll use
It goes in while the ground is open
Cable runs with the groundworks, under the paths and beds before they are finished. Retro-fitting a planted garden means lifting things you have just paid for.
Most of it runs at low voltage
A transformer sits in the building or near the house and the garden runs off that. Anything on mains is done and certified by a qualified electrician.
Two or three circuits, not one
Terrace, path and planting on separate switches, so you can have some of it without all of it. That is what gets a scheme used on a Tuesday.
Before you ring
What people ask about lighting
Including the one where nothing needs building at all.
Can you light a garden that is already finished?
Yes, and plenty of our lighting work is exactly that. It is slower and more careful than doing it with the groundworks, because the cable has to get under an established garden without wrecking it.
Will it annoy the neighbours?
It should not, and if it does it has been designed badly. Garden lighting sits low and points at things inside your garden. A single security floodlight causes far more arguments than a whole designed scheme.
Does it need planning permission?
Domestic garden lighting normally does not. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the exception, and we check yours before anything is fixed to anything.
Can I start small and add to it?
Yes, and it is a sensible way to do it. Get the cable and the transformer in with capacity to spare, then add fittings as the garden grows in.
Next step
Come and see it at nine
Lighting gets aimed in the dark, so the second half of every lighting visit happens after sunset. Book the first half, and we'll arrange the evening.