Patio Lighting Prolongs your Outdoor Enjoyment

For many of you that are like our family, you have spent lots of time and money planning and building a nice patio that provides hours of enjoyment in the perfect outdoor space. However, when night falls that nice area you spent so much time designing can become useless. So what's the solution? Patio lighting that can turn that dark patio into a warm, inviting space for entertaining and relaxing. When planning your patio lighting be sure to remember that more is not always better. Lighting too much of the area can provide too much glare. For a comfortable patio, a few well-placed patio lamps provide enough lighting to see, but retain the alluring, relaxing mood.

While patio lighting comes in a variety of styles and shapes, there are basically two types. Those powered by electricity, or those that burn lamp oil. I personally think that it takes a mixture of both types to obtain the perfect lighting scheme for a patio. For overhead lighting when your patio is covered, the obvious choice is electrical lights. You could also use hanging solar lights in this situation, which for the purpose of this discussion, I'll put in the class with electrical lights even though they will actually not be connected to the power grid. I would suggest that any overhead lighting you use, be installed on dimmers. With dimmers you can alter the amount of light at different levels in order to obtain the atmosphere you want at different times. If your patio is not covered and you have some tables with umbrellas, you can get LED patio umbrella lights that attach to the ribs of the umbrella and can make the area take on an almost magical feel.

Okay, now that you have taken care of your overhead lighting needs, it's time to look at some of the more subtle forms of patio lighting. The oil burning lamps are ideal for this need. The lamps are portable so they can be placed in different areas of your patio depending on the activities taking place at any given time. Keeping in mind that these oil burning lamps have an exposed flame, try to place these lamps in a place where they will not be bumped and possibly knocked over. Hot burning oil on the floor of a patio can quickly alter the mood of even the most lively party. Since you are going to be burning oil anyway, you might as well make the lamps serve a dual purpose and burn a citronella oil that will repel insects. Citronella oil is a safe, effective pesticide that emits a lemony fragrance that helps drive mosquitoes away. If you live in an area where mosquitoes are a problem you know why I suggest citronella oil.

When planning your patio lighting project, keep in mind that there is no reason that you cannot enjoy the same touches outside of your home that you enjoy inside. With all the choices available to you today, you should be able to develop a lighting scheme that can be used as an accent to the natural beauty of your surrounding landscape. By taking the time to discover the correct placement, your lighting will add that extra bit of allure and ambiance that will set just the right mood you are looking for.