The best solar outdoor lighting that will shine brightly season after season

Solar and wireless USB-charged outdoor lighting offers unique creative freedom around our patios, driveways and landscaping.

Kya deLongchamps shows how to layer up a light show that will shine brightly for multiple seasons

Every year beckons in a glittering carnival of mesmerising pendants, stakes, lanterns, fairy lights, and explosive fireworks blossoming with starlight touches to light our way and chase shadows back down the garden.

The choice in sunshine-powered red-hot-chilli party strings and bobbing steel allium heads is dazzling. Still, with wildly varying quality, how do we avoid a throw-away light-show of failing wiring, rusting housings, feeble arrays, and doddering batteries? Layer up a solar light show that’s altogether brighter by design and intended to last multiple seasons.

Determine the job

Flash or function, the specified lumens of the LED light and to an extent, its housing style will determine what you can do with your solar lighting. That might be a dozen to a hundred atmospheric lights working together on a single string or cable (5 lumens to 10 lumens each), a 100-lumen spot-light uplighting a tree, or a single oversized bulb in a cool shade, dropped over a bistro table. Tip? Play in the garden by night with a couple of torches and any Christmas battery strings you already have before buying anything.

With walkways, we need task lighting that we can completely rely on. LED path lighting (staggered and set back appropriately) comes in around 100 to 200 lumens with nicely intersecting pools of light. An effective motion-sensitive security light designed to guide your steps and startle villains will start at 700 lumens, rising to about 1400 lumens. Consider if you want points of light, a directed spot, a diffused glow, or a wider scatter. With sensor lights — note the range and angle of the sensor (for example, 8m/360C).

Seasonal picks

Decorating a border or elevating a fence, solar doesn’t rely on blazing sunshine. Still, with shorter, darker days and increased shading due to the low arc of the sun, a tiny solar collector will struggle to deliver more than a few hours of continuous light after October.

During the height of summer, with a south-facing solar collector, you can generally count on 8-12 hours of festival charm, and with good dusk sensors and intermittent flashing in decorative lights, you can push this out a bit.

For motion-sensitive lighting, because they are on periodically using motion-activated PIR, they should work dusk-to-dawn without a problem (year-round if the panel is sited well). Cheap, lightly built security solar lights and pond additions will hit the bin within 12 months. Look for a two-year warranty.

A glowing festival vibe, wire-free and ready to go, from Lights4Fun: Solar and USB lighting removes a trail of wiring, transformers and hassle, recharging your light show by day.

Battery life

Solar lights have integral solar modules serving batteries that should last for at least two years. At a frigid -16C, solar lights may still work during testing, but the battery will be haemorrhaging energy — delivering a short show. There’s a slight but cumulative degradation year on year. Extremely cheap batteries sealed in an inexpensive light may only last months. We can use a NiCad (nickel cadmium) rechargeable battery or a NiMH (nickel metal hydride) rechargeable battery, and some forms of lithium-ion (LiFePO4). NiMH and LiFePO4 batteries are newer technologies, last longer, and are more environmentally friendly, but LiFePO4 only work with specified, quality solar lights designed for 3.2V. They are specified as AA or AAA. In winter, charge the solar as fully as possible on a bright day or use the USB option. Now, bring your non-essential decorative solar lights indoors, removing the batteries to protect their capacity.

Inexpensive solar pieces have varying levels of quality. Look for batteries that can be replaced, rather than being sealed into the unit; lantern, €7, Penneys.

Hybrid tricks

Hybrids (USB/solar or mains/solar) offer the versatility of a solar light with a USB or mains charging option, extending their shift on darker days. To wring the best out of solar, use PIR and any timer function to turn the lights on only where they are needed. Just remember that with USB lighting, the onus is on you to regularly recharge the units — something of a pain beyond the odd hanging pendant. Just like solar models, they will drop charge quicker in colder conditions and according to the size of lumens. To extend use-time, look for reduced power Eco-mode and twinkling or pulses that reduce continuous ON time.

Ikea's 10cm Solviden pendant lamp (solar), €7 in white or cream.

Housing

Given enough time outdoors, cheap, thin plastic will become brittle and break. With low UV-resistance, it’s also likely to discolour. In your serious solar buys, look for stainless steel, quality thick composites and plastics, and corrosion-resistant die-cast aluminium bodies. Choose an IP44 or better still an IP65 ingress-protection-rating for solar, USB or hybrid lamps. Tiny drilled out drip-holes allow collected moisture to seep naturally down out of large bulbs and housings, reducing mould growth. Shatterproof bulbs have not only greater longevity but are safer if the string or pendant does take off in the breeze. Outdoor lighting will get a regular drenching with wind-blown rain, so invest in thick cables to weigh and secure strings and nets.

Siting for success

Every one of your solar blossoms, chains and pillars will rely on a good charge to shine through several evening hours. If you are screwing something to the wall or spearing it to the lawn to flank paths, aspect matters whether the little solar panel is built into the housing or connected by a short wire. The ideal is south-facing light at an angle of around 30C.

This is open, unshaded light, without shadow interfering with the collector. This does not mean you cannot use solar lighting in your east, west or even north-facing garden; we just incline the collector panel to the best position possible. Don’t bury the panel behind a cloud of border plants.

With giant single solar blooms with integral panels, you can often twist them around to grab that optimal sunshine, or the panel may be on a cable where you can stake or clip it into a better orientation. Look for at least 1m of cable. Check the units regularly to ensure they haven’t been jostled out of true and give the collector a wipe down to keep it sparkling clean.

Novah solar path/deck lamps, from €62, Etc Shop.

Permanent style

For paths and driveways, mains or mains/12V cable lighting offers consistent, dependable lighting. Plug-and-play 12V systems can be installed DIY using the right transformers and connectors.

Hybrid mains/solar lamps with PIR motion sensors step you into sustainable lighting that won’t abruptly let you down in a path bollard or wall light, even in the depths of winter.

With fixed outdoor lighting, a solar hybrid should match the quality of the mains light, lasting a decade or more without flaking its colour coat or falling to bits. The most efficient solar panels are monocrystalline models.

Adjustable heads, hoods, and aesthetically inclined diffusers will perk the design further, and quality, mains-fed LED solar units matched to lithium-ion batteries can shine through 20,000 hours. Bigger solar collectors are pug-ugly. Use them with longer cables, so that you can place them away from the light source, out of sight, but enjoying an ideal orientation to the sun.

Layering technologies

Battery lighting covers both disposable batteries, rechargeable batteries (including solar), and USB-charged lighting with a battery built in to hold a charge for many hours. USB lighting in decorative and functional forms is having a moment indoors and out, offering chic, sumptuous design possibilities in all types of wire-free lighting with super simple charging options for up to 10 hours of use.

Choose from trending globe styles, to wall batons and stunning table lamps with an architectural edge.

If you want to set-and-forget use classic solar all over your planting, together with the reliability of 12V mains cable systems for paths and patios, adding a layering of USB or USB/solar hybrid feature lighting with integrated dimmers for seating areas. Table lamps and visually weighty pendants in USB models really deliver on that outdoor-room vibe. Bring the whole show indoors, come September.