Create an enchanting outdoor space with the outdoor fairy lights and firepits that deliver a cosy campfire mood. Layer garden lighting into the garden and always add atmosphere, whether to add al fresco impact with an impressive ceiling of lights or to add a glow to your borders to improve your view of a tired outdoor space. Either way, garden lighting is an easy way to improve how you enjoy your garden and make it extra inviting so that you and the family can stay out longer. Here are our best tips to enjoy the garden more, lit up at night.
Add atmosphere to your outdoor with lights
There’s nothing more captivating than sitting beneath a pretty canopy of fairy lights when socialising outside; it feels magical and adds a cosy mood that keeps you in comfort whilst sitting out. This atmosphere is hard to achieve any other way after dusk, and now that there are so many easy and accessible ways to light up the garden, no one needs to give in to the temptation to pack up and retreat indoors at dusk. Here are our favourite atmosphere makers...
“The better you make your outdoor, the more available it is for you to use every day...”
DANI TAYLOR
Gather around an outdoor firepit
Another way to stay outside chatting for longer, away from electronics and the TV, is to light a fire in the garden using a fire pit or chiminea. A fire pit will add an intimate campfire mood to an outdoor garden party and offers light to your outdoor seating area on summer nights. If you’re looking for a shortcut, consider a firepit table such as our Antibes Curved Modular Dining Set With Firepit - because there’s nothing more Scandi-hygge outdoor than gathering around the fire at dusk.
How to hang garden string lights
A ceiling of festoon lights in the garden will zone your social area, and we recommend that you zig-zag the lights above you rather than running them along fence edges – it has a much more magical effect. To hang string lights on a covered patio without nails or in an open space in the absence of a pergola roof, employ available fence poles and guttering and use outdoor “S hooks” and “gutter hooks” that hang over the top of posts to provide a sturdy bracket hook suitable for hanging outdoor lights. Employ the additional vertical of an outdoor shepherd’s hook/festoon holder and secure it with zip ties. Small space tip: Clever parasol lights can achieve just the same effect!
How to install garden lights on a covered patio
We recommend not lighting the edge of your space when looking at how to light a patio because it only highlights the edges. Create a ceiling of lights if you’re lighting a covered patio and use gutter hooks and s hooks for a zig-zag design. Alternatively, hang a solar outdoor pendant light or design an outdoor lighting scheme at ground level, making use of outdoor solar lanterns on tables, and smaller outdoor wire lights that can be added to your planting for that added summer magic – the variance in height across the space will draw the eye through it, adding depth.
Enjoy an outdoor kitchen area
Lit up at night, a garden appears bigger and more inviting – more garden to watch from the patio when sitting out at night, and from inside the house looking out in summer. Design your very best vista using solar path lights nestled in the borders, and solar lanterns hung from trees – both make a feature of your blossoming garden. Alternatively, make a magical statement of your furniture using our hanging chair lights – you’re much more likely to be enticed outside for a late-night stroll the more inviting it looks.
Wire-free garden lighting
Wire-free garden lights are an easy way to add atmosphere to your space because you don’t need a big garden to experiment or a big budget and professional wiring. A quick and easy way to add light to the garden is using the best garden solar lights, stylish solar-powered lanterns and solar stake lights that will elevate the look of your dining table, pathways and flowerbeds. Garden solar lights work with no need for batteries because they use direct sunlight so that you are free to move them around as you wish, adding atmosphere where and when you think it’s lacking. If you want to enhance your scheme further, remember a lit faux Christmas tree in a rattan planter can take on a summer topiary feel over the warmer months – simply leave the decorations in the attic!