LED Landscape Lighting or Solar Landscaping Lights: Which Is Best For Your Harrisburg, PA Home?
Part of being a homeowner today is making environmentally responsible choices about home and landscape improvements. One of the biggest areas where these improvements can be made is landscape lighting. Good landscape lighting is essential for safety, function, and beauty, but of course it can use quite a lot of electricity. You have likely heard about the benefits of better lighting systems and may be wondering if it’s worth switching. We’ll help you make a choice between LED landscape lighting or solar landscape lights: which is best for your Harrisburg, PA home?
Related: 4 Ways to Beautify Your Front Yard with Landscape Lighting in Mechanicsburg and Harrisburg, PA
What is LED Landscape Lighting?
The acronym LED stands for light-emitting diodes. These small light sources use a small amount of electricity to efficiently produce bright light. LEDs were first used in 1962 and have become widely available and affordable as a source of light for all sorts of home applications, both indoors and outdoors.
What is Solar Landscape Lighting?
Solar landscape lighting refers not to what kind of light is produced, but how the energy is collected. Solar powered lights get all of their energy from sunlight, which they store in batteries. After dark, these lights use the stored power to provide landscape lighting. Solar powered lights include both traditional light bulbs and LEDs are ways of lighting a space.
What are the Benefits of LED Landscape Lighting?
LED landscape lighting is especially useful in landscape lighting because those lights demand much more wear and tear. While you may only use certain lights in your home when you’re using that room, landscape lights have a full time job. While many lights inside your home are turned off throughout the night, landscape lights are on the entire time.
LEDs will use far less energy than traditional light bulbs and will need many fewer replacements over the years. In fact, LEDs use almost all of their energy for light while traditional light bulbs waste energy to the point where they’re hot to the touch. This high energy usage leads to a much quicker burnout, with traditional light bulbs needing replacement once or twice per year while LEDs don’t need to be replaced for up to 10 years.
What are the Benefits of Solar Landscaping Lights?
The use of solar landscaping lights in your landscape design will drastically reduce the electricity usage of your landscape. Those lights work hard and, frankly, the sun is providing free and renewable energy that you can take advantage of. Between being more ecologically conscious in your landscape design and reaping the benefits of a much smaller electricity bill, you’ll never look back after installing solar landscaping lights in your property. Keep in mind that they should be used as accent lighting rather than your primary light sources.
Which Light Should I Prioritize?
The most important spaces in your entire landscape when it comes to lighting strategy are your paved surfaces, such as the walkways, patio, pool deck, and driveway. Each of these spaces is built for people or vehicles moving around, so safety is absolutely the priority. While solar powered lights aren’t unsafe per se, they do have a tendency to become unusable in this capacity. Whenever heavy snow falls or long periods of cloudy weather rolls in, your solar powered lights will not get the sunlight they require to operate. Instead of risking this, you should have all of your paved surface lights hardwired. It’s definitely a big bonus to use LEDs in these spaces since they will last much longer and you’ll spend less for electricity.
Related: Landscapers Near Me Recommend These Ideas for Upgrading Outdoor Living Spaces in Camp Hill, PA