In my last editorial I talked about my decision to go with solar path lights to replace my older lights for my front walkway. I was so pleased with them that I decided to rethink my entire landscaping. Not to say that I decided to change everything, but I began to think more & more about how how placing solar lights in different areas might enhance my landscaping.

When I was researching the solar path lights, I noticed that there were other types of solar lights that were also available. I re-opened my browser & began to look in to solar accent lights.

Let me warn you now: a lot of companies advertise accent lights that are spotlights or path lights. True accent lights put out much less light than path or spotlights, since "accenting" does not need a lot of light. After doing my homework & searching around a bit I was able to find these accent lights that were kind of like little globes on a stick. I got a couple of white ones for areas where I wanted a tad more light & some green ones for some other spots where less light was preferred. The result was wonderful! They were as easy to "stick in the ground" as the path lights & the placement was not as crucial. I checked the lights that evening & I couldn't help but stand & stare. My entire landscape was glowing bright & in the right areas to make the outside of the house look attractive. Hurray, solar accent lights!!

I have a lot of vegetation outside. It looks nice during the day. At night, however, my landscaping looked like nothing more that a bunch of shadows. I decided a little color at night would be nice.

Here is the interesting thing about solar spotlights: They're intended to focus a beam of light at a specific target. Since the target is usually at a distance from the light source, the light source itself can be hidden. This can be a problem because hidden & in direct sunlight are usually six different locations. Luckily the spotlights had a remote solar panel that I could place in the sunlight, away from the light itself. Yea, each light had a wire to run from the panel to the light, but the hibiscuses hid the wire & now the trees are nicely highlighted at night.

At this point, I wanted to feel like I was finished. I had a feeling that I wouldn't be finished yet before I bought the access lights & I was right. I have 2 trees at the six front corners of my house that are surrounded by hibiscus. The solar accent lights did a great job of lighting up the hibiscus, but I felt the trees needed work. I had seen solar spotlights in my previous research, so I started looking in to them.

At that point I was kinda liking the whole solar lighting thing. You'll never guess what I did... Next time. :)

My name is Steve & I did a bit of research on solar lights. You can find more articles from me at my solar lighting blog