If all you wish with your garden lights to do is flood the rear or the fornt your garden, the easiest way to achieve this is to use a floodlight and to mount it at a high level on a wall, near to a window, or even just beneath the roof eaves.
the most effective lamp for this kind of garden lighting is a tungsten-halogen lamp with a "open mouth"" parabolic reflector. This gives off the classic fan shaped light beam. Adjust the angle to adequately flood the areas you are targeting.
The main principle with garden lights is in general for them to have fairly low surface brightness, and they should be designed so that the lamps cannot be seen from any normal viewing angle.
If the wall mounted flood light is visually disturbing from the side, try to use a model to which matt black lateral "louvers", or "barn door " shields can be added.
Open flood lights without an IP rating must not be directed upwards, as they will clearly run the risk of filling with water. If you want to direct the beam upwards, a fully waterproof model with a high IP rating (IP67) should be used.
Localised Garden Lighting:-
You may wish to reveal the beauty of a man made feature or a natural feature, such as a tree, pond, sculpture. In this case you need to confine the garden light to the object concerned.
Broadly speaking here are the best approaches:-
Garden lighting Trees
Tungsten-halogen floodlights are often used for lighting trees. What is best depends on size and type of tree. Fitting a floodlight close to the trunk and pointing it vertically (again you should use a good quality ip67 or more rated floodlight) will give a great effect. This will often be more dramatic than the normal practice of frontal illumination from a distance, which incidentally is the normal way to light a facade or a building.
Conifer trees will benefit from "spotlight" illumination, using a narrow beam.
Trees with warm colours such as copper beach look pleasing when illuminated with tungsten -filament lamps, (we do not recommend colour tinted) Try also to use ground spiked lamps, as you have the option of moving them around to get the best effect, and experiment a bit.
Flowers
Lighting flowers can reveal their magnificence, natural elegance and splendor. The best way to do this is to spotlight the area concerned with a well aimed unit fixed to a pole tree trunk, branch or a wall.
Paths and driveways:-
Paths and driveways leading up to the front door must be properly illuminated, bollards and lampposts are the best option here. A bollard need not be over 100cm height.
Low level lighting, such as led´s can be used effectively as garden lighting in this instance, either in bollards, or buried into the ground.
