Four o'clock to 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 go from afternoon to evening.

Start at four o'clock Keep scrolling. The clock does the rest.

Scroll

Scroll slowly

Same garden. Four o'clock, then nine.

It's one photograph. As you scroll, the sun goes down behind the hedge and the lights come up in the order a real scheme gets switched on: the glass, the terrace, the festoons, the path, then the borders.

A garden building with full-height sliding glass doors at the end of a striped lawn, hedges either side. — Four o'clock. It's a nice building at the end of a nice lawn, and it's empty.

The same four o'clock photograph, darkened in the browser, with the rooms lit behind the glass, light falling across the paving, the terrace and the festoons on, and the hedge uplit. — Nine. The house, the terrace, the festoons, the path and the borders, lit in that order.

Nothing in that garden is bright on its own. Most of the light comes out through the glass, and the rest is eight or ten small fittings on three circuits, aimed at things worth looking at.

What you just watched

Five layers, in the order they come on

The building

Light coming out through the glass does most of the work before a single fitting goes in the garden. Then a wash on the front, and something on the reveal so the shape reads at night.

The terrace

Wherever people actually sit. Low, warm, under things rather than over them, and 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

Path lights so you can get down the garden in February without a torch. Low enough not to dazzle, and always on the steps.

The planting

Last, once everything else is settled. Uplights into a multi-stem tree, a wash through a hedge, a spike behind the grasses so the shadow does the work.

A low bollard light among dark planting at night, lighting the leaves around it.

Festoon lights strung through a large tree over a garden at dusk.

A small spike uplight sunk into dense green planting at night.

A back garden at dusk with a lit fence line and low lights in the borders.

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.

Drawn with the rest of the garden

A timber deck at night with low seating, a lit fire table and planting along the boundary.

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.

A long table under a tree in a garden at dusk, lit by hanging bulbs.

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.

A dark timber-clad garden building at dusk, its glass doors open and warm light spilling onto a timber deck.

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.

Call 0121 496 0742 Book a site visit