All lit up

With a little consideration, it’s possible to transform your outdoor area from dark and dull to beautifully lit and elegant, simply by choosing the right lighting.
Well-planned garden lighting will not only make your outdoor area safer, but accentuate the finest aspects of your home and garden, while providing after-dark outdoor ambiance. Thankfully, the days of mixing and matching different expensive lighting brands and figuring out tricky wiring are over. Getting your outdoor ambiance right has never been easier thanks to Mitre 10’s high quality ‘plug and play’ Garden Lights system.
Before planning your outdoor lighting design, ask yourself these questions:
What are your lighting needs? Do you have areas such as paths, steps and obstacles that need to be lit for safety? Do you spend time entertaining guests and need to enhance the atmosphere? Do you have specific features, like sculptures or trees, which deserve to be lit up after dark?

What is your home style? Look at your home in the daylight and decide whether it has a simple design, villa or modern feel. By matching the style and design of the lighting fixtures to your house, you can create stand-out or subtle character. Outdoor torches, ornate garden lanterns, contemporary spotlights and fairy lights each lend a different style to your outdoor area.
What is the position of the viewer? Consider the effects of your lighting design on the viewer. Make sure that the lights will not be glaring to the eyes.
 
Lighting techniques
A variety of lighting techniques can be used to achieve different effects and show off certain aspects of your home and garden.
Coloured lights There’s no need to stick with plain white lighting; let your imagination go wild and add new dimension to your landscape design with coloured lighting. While white lighting will light up the garden in its natural colours, yellow lights can be used to brighten up your greens, red lights will add warm depth and blue lights will cool natural shades. Green light can make foliage look lush.
Up lighting Lighting from the bottom up is a popular technique in garden lighting design. Plants are lit brightly at the bottom and the light fades naturally higher up. This soft light leads to a gentle, romantic atmosphere.
Frontal lighting This is a dramatic lighting technique, which uses direct frontal light. It is best kept to one main feature you wish to make your focal point, particularly when the surrounding plants feature diffused lighting. Don’t have more than one focal point and don’t forget the diffused lighting, or the effect can become harsh. 
Backlighting Backlighting is a clever way to mimic the effect created by the setting sun. It creates a silhouette of a structural plant and is ideal for highlighting trees with large leaves.
Down lighting Flood lights can be used to light large outdoor entertaining areas from above, creating a daylight effect in the evening. While not the most creative lighting technique, it’s certainly functional for those that do a lot of outdoor entertaining. Lights can also be placed in trees and on walls to provide a hazy glow in the space below.
 
Landscape design lighting aspects
Create a striking outdoor area by paying attention to the following aspects of your outdoor lighting.
Contrast Contrasting lighting effects in different sections creates a sense of mystique and can be used to highlight the best features of your garden.
Path lighting Pathways and driveways should be lit for safety, either by low lighting that runs the length of the path and highlights steps or uneven terrain, or by lights higher up on posts to flood the path with light.
Seasonal changes
Just as the plants change with the seasons, you can be creative with your lighting to highlight shrubs during winter or focus on blossoms during the spring.
 
Lighting water features
Water features provide an opportunity to create special effects. This could be by lighting above a pond, backlighting a fall of water, or submerging lights to create a magical, shimmering effect.

Spotlights
As suggested by their name, spotlights are used to draw attention to a particular focal point. Choose narrow beam spotlights to intensely light a small area or wide beam spotlights to diffuse light over a larger area.
 
Solar-powered garden lights
Solar garden lights are handy for well-lit areas (because they need at least 5-10 hours of sunlight to light up at night). There’s no electrical installation and they’re simply pushed into the earth. Once purchased there are no running costs and they can be moved around to light different areas as required.
Mitre 10’s garden lights centre offer fantastic, affordable and simple ways to transform your garden with their new pre-wired plug and play 12-volt garden lights system. It’s a quality European brand with lights priced from $19.98 to $89.98. The set-up process has never been easier.

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Three-step garden lights system

1) Choose the lights that best suit your home and garden.

2) Add the wattage of the lights together and select a transformer that is greater than the total wattage.

3) Choose your cable.

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The garden lights centre at Mitre 10 offers: deck lights, wall lights, bollards and spotlights, cables, accessories and replacement globes – everything you need to transform your outdoor area. There’s a guide for the selection process and a convenient in-store garden planner, which allows you to draw up your own garden plan and manage your cable considerations.
Set up tips
* When positioning the transformer, aim to keep the main cable line as short as possible or select a SPT 3 cable – this will ensure optimum brightness by reducing voltage drop.
* For best results, space lights evenly.
* Make sure you turn off the power supply when fitting the lights.