How To Clean Exterior Lighting

Unfortunately, our exterior lighting doesn’t get the tender loving care as frequently (if ever) as it would like. Being exposed to the elements often ends up with the lighting being coated with dirt and dust. Cleaning up your exterior fixtures, however, can make your entire outdoor area look much nicer (even newer), and can increase the brightness of your lights at night by up to 20% - why wouldn’t you want to achieve this?

Begin by turning off all exterior lighting in your yard and allowing the globes to cool down completely. Often, it is best to begin cleaning in the morning or early afternoon, when your globes have had a number of hours to cool down.

Next, you can dampen an old rag with some clean water. Remove each globe from its socket and wipe them down with the rag; this will remove all of the dust that has gathered over time. Once you’re finished, replace the globe back into the exterior lighting fixture. Spray some glass cleaner (such as Windex) onto the same rag, and use it to wipe down any glass that you happen to notice in your fixtures, such as the panels in a lantern, for example.

Take a new cloth and dampen it with water. Use it to wipe away all of the dirt and dust that has gathered on the metal parts of your exterior lighting. If you find that the metal has grown dull, you can apply a teaspoon of metal polish to each fixture and polish it gently with the cloth.

Whilst cleaning your exterior lighting is not a chore that you can complete every day or even every weekend, it is something that should be done around twice to year to ensure that they look much nicer and illuminate your yard as best as they can. It doesn’t take long – an hour or two, at the most, is all you need.

How Outdoor Lights Can Enhance Beauty of Your House

So far you have known lights as means of brightening home interior or exterior of your house, but now time has changed. Today lighting has evolved also as a means of decorating home exterior. With lights you can draw the attention of viewer to any particular place. This is what can be utilized to beautify your home exterior.

For instance, you have placed a beautiful clay pot just outside your house that catches the attention of guests or passers by in the day, but what about night? Should this expensive art piece be lost in the dark? Of course not, simply install a downlight or pendent light over it hanging with the ceiling. Also, you can highlight that special plant you bought from exclusive plant exhibition in the same way or different.

Pillars just outside your door are common places to hang wall light, but you can do it in different way from the usual one by opting for some more fashionable exterior lights. You can also highlight some of your garden areas with outdoor lights. Take your fountain for example. Apart from fitting light inside the fountain, place light around it or on the ground surrounding in such a way that it draw attention all as a whole not just the water part. Your bonfire area in the lawn can be another perfect place of being experimental with lights. By lighting your bonfire area you will be having a perfect place to enjoy chat and a fabulous moment even when you are not using it for fire.

Similarly, you can install outdoor lights in your patio or pergola and make your garden the most sought after corner of your house to spend time or through a party. So, with exterior lights you can decorate your house in as many ways as you can, it’s just how far your imagination works.

How To Space External Wall Lights

These days, wall lights are not only a popular addition for the interiors of our homes – they can be used to make a statement or illuminate a safe walkway on the exterior of our homes, too. As these lights tend to be focused in a downward direction, however, how should they be spaced on the wall to ensure that they provide adequate illumination?

First, you will need to determine where you intend to install wall fixtures around the outside of your home – do you want to illuminate a driveway or pathway; do you want to showcase a feature of your yard; or do you want to create a soft ambience to relax outdoors to?

Safety

If you are hanging wall lights outside in order to provide safety (such as illuminating a pathway), they should be mounted very close to the roof, as this will allow them to light up a much larger area. In these scenarios, you should also use floodlight globes over the softer ones that wall fixtures are normally fitted with.

Decorative

If you are hanging wall fixtures outside to showcase a feature of your yard (such as a swimming pool or sculpture) or to create a peaceful outdoor ambience, they should be mounted much lower to the ground. The general rule of thumb is that the fixtures should be hung at about one-third of the height of the nearest door.

As you can see, wall lights no longer just have a place inside our homes – they can be used outside, too, if you want to create a safe or ambient atmosphere for your family and visitors to your home. By hanging the lights at appropriate spacing’s, you can ensure the best effect possible.