Glare vs pollution

Yesterday I wrote about light pollution, but a lot of people confuse this with glare, which is not really the same thing. Yes, it is true that glare from badly chosen or badly positioned gate lights and light trespass into the neighbours windows is usually because the garden lights have been badly chosen or positioned for a sensitive location, but most pollution is caused by fittings that are just too bright, often because they are old types which need replacing with the more controlled types of lighting now available.

In garden lighting design, position is one of the first things to consider, pointing garden lights away from the house, conservatory and patio and ensuring that they don't intrude beyond your own boundary. Choosing the right lamps helps to ensure that uplighting results in focused garden lighting effects rather than just blasting light into the sky.

But once you have undertaken these steps in garden lighting design, you may still need to think about glare control - avoiding seeing a beam of light from a spotlight when you sit on the terrace, stroll around the garden or drive up to your front door. Spike spotlights close to a window, seating area or circulation route should be ones with glare protection. This can be achieved in three ways. The first is to use a garden spotlight with a glare shield, such as Megabay's M5520 Universal Spike Spotlight, which in my humble opinion is the best all-round garden spike spotlight on the market. It's a cast aluminium unit available in green, black or an excellent mottled grey finish called "granite" which is great for rockeries. It is a much copied design, but beware cheap imitations where the powder coat peels off after a couple of years - stick with the original design by Megabay.

The second choice is to use a spotlight in which the lamp is well set back inside the fitting and not immediately behind the front lens, so that the body of the fitting shields the light source from view. Megabay's copper and chrome spotlights all have this feature and are worth considering if your budget is just a little more generous. The M6125 Lutuna spike spot, M6160 Bourossa wall spotlight and M6205 or M6210 tall pole spots all have this feature.

The third main option in glare control is to fit an internal honeycomb glare louvre - this is simply a small piece of expanded metal mesh which cuts off the sideways visibility of the light source inside the garden light. They are available to fit most Megabay and Elipta garden light fittings from Lighting for Gardens and are listed in the list of filters and lenses when you click on these fittings in the online product gallery. Some clip on to the front of the MR16 or GU10 lamp and asome are inserted loose behind the front lens or lamp-retention clip.

Light pollution

Light pollution has been recognised in recent years as an increasing problem but has only been covered by the general law of nuisance which has been little used in relation to lighting. The Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 came into force earlier this year and expands the definition of statutory nuisance to include “artificial light emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance”. So your local authority now has powers to deal with light as a nuisance if you can demonstrate that a nuisance exists. This will almost certainly cover badly positioned security floodlights, but it can also cover the “light trespass” of garden lighting glaring over the fence into neighbours windows or adjoining roadways so it essential when designing your garden lighting system to avoid using spotlights and floodlights in a way which can cause this problem. Badly chosen lights set into entrance gate pillars may even be a hazard to traffic so take care. The “dark skies” lobby claim that artificial lighting ruins the night sky for observation of the stars. Most of this is caused by old fashioned and indiscriminate public and street lighting, but in designing your garden lighting system you should be sensitive to pollution of the sky, using beams of light to “fit” the tree or statue you are uplighting, rather than flooding the sky from cheap unfocused 500 watt jobbies from the DIY store. Lighting for Gardens has a couple of online help sheets on lighting trees, one with low voltage garden lights and another with more powerful metal halide garden lights, which can help you to understand some techniques of uplighting trees in a controlled manner. There are also a couple of help sheets on choosing halogen lamps which will give you some ideas of fitting the lamp beam to the subject you are lighting. If you are worried about this issue, maybe you should think about having your creative garden lighting professionally designed – “professional lightscaping”

Will it go green?

That's one of the frequently asked questions I get about copper garden lighting. In the very long term, the answer is probably yes because of the pollution in our atmosphere.

In the short term - by that I mean several years - the answer is usually no. Copper garden lights treated to just rain and sun will tend to go a mottled nutty brown finish within a few weeks. This is an attractive natural finish - more natural than any painted finish - which blends well with brick, stone, gravel, woody stems, bark mulch - in other words most of the natural backgrounds we find in landscaped gardens. You'll find an example online at http://www.lightingforgardens.com/home.php if you visit the product gallery or search for the M6415 Chatenay copper spreadlight. The M6131 copper downlight from Megabay is another example shown on the Lighting for Gardens website.

Copper garden lights will go green with the effect of chemicals, whether that's copper fungicide sprayed by the gardener, tap water with various dissolved salts sprayed around by the irrigation system or pressure washer, or polluted rainfall near motorways. But I have seen several ten year old garden lighting systems when revisiting clients 10 years after initial installation and the copper garden lights have been that nice nutty brown colour rather than muddy verdigris.

That's provided you are not like the lady at the Chelsea Flower Show who saw a display of Megabay's copper garden lights and asked "how often would my housekeeper have to polish these?" Need I say more?

led's limited

Its a foggy morning in Shanghai as I start a round of visits to Chinese manufacturers. They have come a long way in terms of quality in recent years, but they still have no real appreciation of why certain design features matter in the garden lighting business, I suppose because so few Chinese have a personal garden space in which to understand it at first hand.

Almost always the first thing a Chinese manufacturer shows is the latest led (light emitting diode) garden lighting product. Thankfully even they are beginning to admit that the so-called led spotlight is no such thing. Most led's don't have the projection to create lighting effects with garden subjects, so led spotlights have been merely a gimmick, something made down to a price to be sold in a colourful box in the garden centre or the typical garden lighting web site alongside that other joke product, the solar light.

That's about to change, though, but not from the Chinese led manufacturers. Chinese manufacturers of light fittings are increasingly deserting indigenous led manufacturers and changing over to led's from Western or Taiwanese companies for their technical performance and reliability. The impetus at present is coming from a small number of western companies who are taking the new generation of high power led's and packaging them in garden lighting products where they can resist problems of moisture, especially condensation, which afflict a lot of the cheaper Chinese offerings.

A good example of this was shown on Flemings Nurseries' Australian garden which won a gold Medal at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. ME Lighting provided their Australian led lighting products for a stunning lighting display which went largely unappreciated at this mainly daylight show. They have used the latest Luxeon 3w and 5w led's, plus some of the better quality low power led products, to produce one of the first practical ranges of led garden lights I have seen yet. They will be available in the UK shortly, so watch this space on http://www.lightingforgardens.com/home.php. Or you can e-mail me at sales@lightingforgardens.com to get an ME Lighting brochure and UK price list.

Lighting for Gardens also has some great offers on small led deck lights and recessed garden lights which fulfill the hitherto main application of led's - outlining a deck , patio or path.

Weatherproof or waterproof?

Whenever I deal with comments about water getting into garden light fittings, people often say, isn't this waterproof? The answer is often no, simply because there are degrees of resistance to ingress of water, dust and objects (such as children's fingers) according to a scale of ingress protection. IP68 means it is fully waterproof, usually to a specified depth which defines the pressure the fitting is designed to with stand without leaking. That is the rating for an underwater light, where the first digit, 6, means it is dust-tight and the second digit, 8, means it is watertight to continual, rather than occasional or intermittent, submersion.

Most other garden lights are weatherproof, having a lower but still satisfactory rating, usually of IP55 upwards for pathlights, and spotlights, and IP44 upwards for wall lights. They earn their category by being designed to continue working, even if a bit of water gets in, by ensuring that water drains out or doesn't touch live parts.

Usually comments about "water getting in" betray a lack of awareness that garden lights with a high IP rating will hold in condensation from the moist air around on the day they were installed or the lamp (bulb) was last changed. Condensation forms on the inside of the glass lens when the fitting cools down after use and evaporates again when the lights are switched on. Usually this is nothing to worry about and can be eliminated by running the light fitting with the top loosely fitted for half an hour to warm it up and drive out moisture before switching off and tightening down the top plate, bezel or other cover plate.

Visit http://www.lightingforgardens.com/home.php and click on view products to see a varirty of garden lighting fittings, then click on a picture to see the full specification and compare IP ratings.

Mission statement

Garden lighting adds an alternative dimension to your garden; extending the day is just part of it – outdoor lighting can provide a totally different view from the daylight perspective, be it for the summer barbecue, or as an alternative to closing the curtains on cooler, damper evenings. Part of the garden lighting design process is about choosing and applying creative garden lighting effects – then the task is to achieve a beautifully lit garden without seeing the light fittings, so skill in choosing the correct garden lights for the patio, terrace and features as well as outdoor lights for the house is the counterpart to artistic exterior lighting design.

This blog will give you tips on creative garden lighting ideas, comments on the frequently asked questions I am asked and advice on how to choose garden lights that will look good and last. You can find some help sheets to start you off at my company's website - Lighting for Gardens