The Best Solar Landscape Lights for Your Yard

Landscape lighting adds both function and beauty to your home, giving you great style and curb appeal as well as additional safety and security. Solar lighting is an easy, cost-effective, and flexible way to add an exterior lighting system—finding the lights you need means thinking through your garden design before you buy.

To make sure you buy the best lighting for your garden design, first consider these key outdoor lighting areas:

• House and Flower Beds: Accent lighting on your house can draw attention to your home’s interesting architectural features, and lighting your flower beds can create dramatic nighttime garden displays. Individual lights can be used to highlight specific plants or garden hardscape elements like fountains, pools, ponds, or sculptures.
• Driveway and Garage: Illuminating your driveway and garage not only improves safety and security, but it also can make an attractive and inviting display for your home.
• Backyard and Fencing: Floodlights with motion sensors and auto-shutoff can be placed on trees and fence gates. Your outdoor living space will look amazing if you install lights along your fence or on your fence posts.
• Front Entry Paths and Steps: Lighting the path and steps to your front entrance is a warm and pleasing welcome to your home after dark and a great safety feature, too.

Solar lights are swift and easy to install since you don’t have to hardwire an electrical source, allowing you to place them almost anywhere in your yard.

Choosing the Right Solar Lights for Your Garden

Once you’ve decided where you want to use solar landscape lighting, review these lighting features:

• Brightness: The brightness, measured in lumens, that you need depends on the function of your lighting. Steps and paths need around 100 lumens, while other lighting can be somewhere in the 50 to 300 range, and a light for your driveway needs 700 lumens or more. Also consider whether the light is a cool white or a warm white.
• Range: Lighting steps and paths will require a range of illumination of only 1 to 2 feet, while lighting your driveway will require a range of 10 feet or more.
• Batteries: Solar lights work by charging a battery with a solar panel. Check the battery life of the solar lights you buy.
• Settings: Your solar lights will serve you best if they switch on and off automatically. Being able to adjust the brightness of your solar lights can be a handy feature in some uses.

Our picks for solar garden landscape lights will brighten your home, show off your garden, and keep you safe at night!

Best Solar Path Lights: Gigalumi Solar Path Lights

The modern stainless steel design of these Gigalumi path lights makes them a great lighting and decorative option for your front walk, sidewalk, driveway, or patio. The solar panel is built-in to the top of the light, and 6 to 8 hours of sunlight will automatically give you 8 to 10 hours of cool-white light with about a 1-foot radius. The package comes with 16 lights, each 14 inches long with a light that’s 2 inches in diameter. A total of 16 AAA batteries, one for each light, are included—just switch them on, and they’re ready to install!

Best Solar Spotlights: APONUO Solar Spotlights

This APONUO high-power, warm-white solar spotlights are perfect for accenting the special features of your home and yard. The four ground lights have two brightness modes and work for 8 to 12 hours. The solar panel can be installed in the ground or wall-mounted with included screws. The lights’ positions can be adjusted vertically through 270 degrees.

Best Solar Ground Lights: Aogist Solar Ground Lights

These Aogist solar stainless steel ground lights automatically give you 6 to 8 hours of light after dark with 8 hours of charging in the sunlight. This eight-pack comes with one AA battery installed in each unit and eight heavy-duty, molded plastic stakes for securing them in the ground. Uplighting is a snap with these user-friendly ground lights!

Best Solar Motion Light: Sunforce Triple-Head Solar Motion Lights

A 1,000-lumen output with a range of 9 feet makes the Sunforce motion sensor spotlight perfect for lighting up your driveway, entryways, or sheds at night. The direction of the light can be adjusted both horizontally and vertically; the detection distance (max. 30 feet) and light duration are adjustable as well. The solar panel doesn’t require direct sunlight to charge, so it can be mounted just about anywhere.