Invest successful the champion outdoor lights, and you tin walk much clip successful your backyard partying, sipping a portion connected your porch, aliases reference successful your shelter aft nan sun goes down. Outdoor plot lights and star lights adhd ambiance, floodlights amended your security, and you tin usage spotlights to prime retired features. I've tested each of these lights successful my ain yard—I won’t lead you down nan plot path.
Read our lighting guides for more, including nan Best Smart Lighting, Best Smart Bulbs, Best Philips Hue Smart Lights, Best Nanoleaf Smart Lights, and Best Govee Smart Lights.
What You Need to Know About Outdoor Lighting
Here are a fewer things to support successful mind erstwhile you spell shopping for outdoor lights.
Power: For astir outdoor lighting, you request to tally a cablegram to a powerfulness outlet, truthful you will want an outdoor socket. If you don’t person an outdoor socket, it’s usually a beautiful inexpensive and speedy occupation for an electrician to instal a weatherproof one. Just beryllium alert that ample powerfulness adapters and awkwardly shaped plugs will not fresh successful outdoor sockets, truthful you will apt besides want immoderate benignant of weatherproof box. I for illustration nan ample Dri-Box ($42) because it has plentifulness of abstraction and scores an IP55 rating. I person besides utilized nan smaller Masterplug Weatherproof Electric Box ($45), and it’s fine. If an outdoor socket isn’t possible, see moving a cablegram indoors, but it tin beryllium tricky and messy if you person to drill done a wall. Solar-powered lights are a bully alternative. You could moreover see utilizing a portable powerfulness station successful a shed aliases different outbuilding. Whatever measurement you go, ever plug nan lighting successful and link it via nan app earlier you instal it successful immoderate outdoor areas.
Photograph: Simon Hill
Control: Most smart backyard lighting connects via Bluetooth aliases Wi-Fi and is controlled by an app connected your phone. You request a decent Wi-Fi signal aliases to beryllium wrong Bluetooth range. While it mightiness look desirable for simplicity to person lighting connected straight to Wi-Fi aliases to usage Bluetooth, location are advantages to systems pinch dedicated hubs. With Philips Hue, for example, lights are overmuch faster to link and respond to commands utilizing nan Hue Hub than done Bluetooth successful nan app. Hubs tin besides let for amended group power and greater range. Most smart lighting tin beryllium controlled by smart sound assistants, for illustration Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Siri, but guarantee you cheque compatibility earlier you buy.
Lumens: The brightness of lighting is measured successful lumens. To springiness you an idea, a modular 60-watt ray bulb puts retired astir 800 lumens.
Color: RGB (red, green, blue) is modular and mixes those 3 to make different colors. RGBW includes a due achromatic alongside red, green, and blue, which offers greater elasticity and is important if you want high-quality achromatic light. Color somesthesia is measured successful Kelvins (K) and listed arsenic a scope (for example, 1200K to 6500K). This scope dictates really lukewarm aliases cool your lighting tin get. Reds and oranges are astatine nan little extremity of nan scale, and blues are astatine nan higher end.
IP Rating: IP stands for Ingress Protection and determines really good a instrumentality stands up to h2o and dust, giving you a clear denotation of really upwind resistant it is. We person an IP standing explainer that focuses connected phones, but each devices, including outdoor lights, usage nan aforesaid IP scale. We person listed nan IP ratings for each ray we recommend. While an IP44 standing mightiness beryllium durable capable for a wall-mounted ray that only has to header pinch rain, you will want IP65 aliases higher for a ray connected nan crushed that whitethorn beryllium submerged aliases covered successful snow.