Outdoor & Garden Lightingin Worcester

Getting it right outside

Start with what the light is for, because the three jobs want different fittings. Finding your front door wants a modest, warm light near the door, on from dusk, and almost nothing else. Making the garden usable in the evening wants several low-output fittings washing walls, steps and planting rather than one bright source. Security wants a sharp movement-triggered flood, aimed down at the approach and off the rest of the time. Fitting a two-thousand-lumen flood beside the back door and leaving it on all evening does the first two jobs badly and annoys everybody nearby.

Aim and spill are what separate a good installation from an expensive one. A flood tilted even slightly above the horizontal throws most of its output into the sky and into your neighbour's bedroom, and it is the single most common cause of a complaint. Soffit downlights washing a wall are more pleasant and more useful than anything pointed outwards, and warm colour temperatures suit brick, stone and planting far better than the cold white that gets sold on brightness.

Construction matters more outdoors than in. Fittings need an IP rating that suits where they actually are: exposed on a wall is not the same as sheltered under a deep soffit, and a fitting in a border gets rain, irrigation and mud thrown at it. Cable out to the garden is armoured, buried at a sensible depth with marker tape above it, and deeper under a drive. Everything outside needs 30mA RCD protection. Where the run is long or the fittings are among planting, a low-voltage garden system on a transformer is often the better answer and is far more forgiving of a spade.

Controls finish it. Dusk-to-dawn photocells for the front of the house, movement detection for security, and a switch indoors for the garden lighting so it is on when you are out there and off when you are not. Putting garden lighting on a photocell alone means lighting an empty garden every night until spring.

What outdoor lighting includes

Aimed, rated and controlled for how you will actually use it.

• Wall lanterns, soffit downlights, step, path and border lighting
• Movement-triggered security lighting, aimed down at the approach
• IP ratings matched to how exposed each position really is
• Armoured cable buried to depth with marker tape above it
• Low-voltage garden systems where they suit the run better
• Photocell, movement and manual control arranged to suit each use
• Aim set after dark, with you, rather than guessed at noon
• Tested, certificate issued, and notified where a new circuit is run

How a lighting job runs

Walk it after dark

What you want lit and what must not be. Half an hour here saves the whole job.

Design and price

Fittings, positions, cable routes and controls, written down with any digging named.

Install

Cable runs first, then fittings. Trenches reinstated and turf put back.

Set the aim

Aimed after dark with you there, because that is the only time it can be judged.

Outdoor lighting across Worcester and Worcestershire

Worcester, Droitwich Spa, Malvern, Pershore, Evesham and Stratford-upon-Avon. The hillside gardens at Malvern are the ones where a low-voltage system usually beats a buried armoured run. If a socket is going out at the same time, put it in the same trench: outside sockets cost a fraction when the ground is already open. Car parks and yards are commercial lighting instead.

Get an outdoor lighting quote

Photos in daylight and a sentence about what you want to be able to see at night. That is enough to start.