I decided to landscape my garden and I wanted to install some garden and outdoor lighting. Instead of hiring an electrician I wanted to make it a DIY yourself project and install low volatage L.E.D. garden lights. However, in previous attempts and from what I’ve observed from friends, low voltage garden lighting is dim and wouldn’t provide the brightness level I’m looking for. With that in mind, I decided to research on what would be a good transformer and sufficient lighting to make this project work. Also, I need an end to end of 24 feet (from the furthest to the nearest lights).

Halogen lights were the first type I considered. These are very bright and cost less than LEDs on the surface. The negative here is the cost of the transformer. The pro to this con, is halogens come in a wide variety of levels. LED garden lighting, being the newer technology, could meet my needs if I wanted to go for the most expensive brands, but halogen lighting is cheap and flexible. The trade off here is cable lengths don’t really come into play but LEDs won’t give off the quality and quantity light a filament globe will. It looks like the best brand for light emitting diodes is Erco, but keep in mind this is more expensive.

Another strike against LEDs is sometimes the light casted is blue and can appear to make your plants and vegetation look blue tinted rather than green. I saw someone that recommended an inexpensive set of Crompton halogen lights for a cheaper and better light.

The HPM solar garden lights were another highly recommended light set. According to HMP, they have been designed to release different types of light for a diverse and enhanced outdoor atmosphere. These do have the standard positive quality of being no wire garden lights so you can easily install and move them to different positions with no problems.

Two other HPM products I liked were the 12 Volt Halogen lights and 12 Volt LED light sets. These are colored well to flow with greenery but don’t revert to simple camoflaugery. Obviously, we’re back to the question of halogen vs. led.  With technology continuing to progress, I’m tempted to go with LED garden lights.  HPM says they last up to 100 times longer than the average globe.  What does up to 100x mean?  I mean in that case, my cell phone background lighting.  We’ll see.

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