Whether you're decorating for a party or trying to incorporate lights into your landscaping, there are some easy, cool and affordable solutions available for those of us without convenient electrical outlets.
The secret? Solar lighting! You can now buy affordable - dare we say, cheap? - lighting of all shapes and sizes to punch up your garden.
The solar lights work by constantly recharging a tiny battery using a small solar cell, which then powers an LED. Because the LED doesn't require a lot of power, you can get hours of light coverage (many now promise 7 hours or longer).
In the last several years, producing these types of lights has become more cheap and ubiquitous than ever before. Your local "has everything" shop/grocery store is likely to carry our shopping list of everything you'd need to light up a garden, both for practical and decorative purposes, and Amazon has competitive deals as well.
Our Shopping List of Solar Lighting for the Garden:
- Hanging lanterns
- Path lights for safety and decor
- String lights
- Floating globes for parties
- Post cap lamps
- Spotlights for trees and landscaping
With each of these elements in play, we can ensure that our front and back yards will be lit attractively, but also include safety elements like guide lights for the front sidewalk steps and motion-detected spotlights for the back door.
As far as decor goes, there are many objects that could be brought out just for parties (floating globes make a nice addition to a water feature or a bowl of punch, but might get dirty over time), but we're happy to leave out string lights year-round, so solar versions make that option a lot more affordable and a lot less energy-wasting.
Do you use solar lights in your yard? Share your tips, recommendations and photos in the comments below.
More Solar Lighting & Decor on Unplggd
- Ikea's Collection of Solar Powered Lighting
- Stylish Outdoor Lighting: Solar Soji Lanterns
- Solar Powered iPod Sound Systems
- Allsop Garden: Solar Powered Outdoor Lighting
- The Unplggd Guide to Entertaining Outdoors This Summer
- Green Style: LED String Lights on the Patio
(Lantern in grass image: Flickr member inger klekacz licensed for use under Creative Commons. Round image: Flickr member brianjmatis licensed for use under Creative Commons. Yard image via Re-nest)
Small Cool Lessons: Discovering Small Space Design Ideas That Really Work
Beatriz's Fun & Functional Workspace
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Sheex Bedding
How to Cook Rice on the Stove
How to Make Fresh Pasta Dough in the Food Processor
We bought some Target ones for our tiny rear deck on our Philly rowhouse. They look very cute, but the LEDs really are much more dim than I'd expected. I mean, I knew not to expect miracles, but just about anything else would be brighter.
They do look cute, though!
Contrabass, thank you so much for saying what I have observed for a long time. Most LED lighting does not illuminate, it simply creates a point of light. If what you want to see is within the very short range of the light, you are OK, but if not, you are left in the dark. LED is energy efficient, but does it really replace other types of light?
I ordered 2 strings of Philips LED lights from Target and also found that they were rather dim on their own. However, I strung them next to each other and that seems to create a satisfactory amount of light.
Linda, yeah, these really are more of an accent piece, than anything that will provide illumination. Given that there's a pair of AA batteries in there getting charged by a tiny solar panel, there's obviously a limit to how much light they'll put off.
If you've ever seen a 3 watt LED from a flashlight, though, they sure can be pretty bright!
My (concrete) patio (container) garden is full of solar lights, but you couldn't read by them. Most of my lights came from Target, save for my gorgeous glass blown string lights, which were a splurge. I took a bunch of those colored solar lights that are intended to be stuck in the ground and put them in my plant containers for accent lights all around.