Inexpensive Solar Shed Light
As solar lighting keeps growing in popularity, so the choices can become more bewildering. As with anything, solar shed lights come in many shapes, sizes and budgets.
For this post, let’s assume you’re on a budget. Maybe you just want to experiment in solar lighting before investing a lot of money. Fair enough.
The Sun Shed Series from Silicon Solar is about the most inexpensive solar shed light we’ve seen. The manufacturer claims an eight hour run time through an “ultra efficient LED light”. The solar panel of shed light is on a swivel making it easy to position to capture the most energy and it comes with a generous ten foot electrical cord.
Solar LED Address Numbers
House guests will never get lost again once you’ve installed a set of solar powered address lights. As soon as the sun goes down, these Solar LED Address Numbers automatically switch on two large white LED lights. This gives a backlighting effect to the cutout numbers – allowing your house number to be clearly seen from some distance.
The LED lights will run for eight to ten hours on a full solar charge.
Handy Solar Keyhole Light
Now here’s a highly practical use for solar powered lighting – the solar keyhole light. One flick of the switch and the whole door lock and handle is illuminated. No more fumbling around in the dark stabbing hopefully at the door with your key.
The light will stay on for ten seconds before automatically switching itself off to save power. On a fully solar charged battery the solar key hole light can be used around seven hundred times – which should be enough attempts to get the key in the door for anyone.
Installation is easy, just stick it to the door with the supplied adhesive pads or screw it to the door. Comes in a choice of white, brass or chrome finish.
Terracotta Decorative Solar Light
Usually we prefer our solar lights more utilitarian than purely decorative but these do look good, don’t they?
You’re looking at the Solar Sphere Terracotta with Circles from My Solar Shop. They come in a pack of four and would be pretty nice accent lights for deck lighting, tabletops or even indoors.
Eight hours of free solar lighting for each full charge.
Follow Your Path with Solar String Lights
Along with solar rock lights, solar string lights are one of the easiest and most flexible ways to get started with solar lighting in your garden.
As the name suggests, these light kits have LED lights on a string – a bit like Christmas lights but with less tinsel :)
Where they really shine – pun intended – is if you want to provide a line of light around an irregular shape like a curved path or drive, for example. Because the lights are on a string, it’s very easy to position the cable and lights so that they follow unusual shapes.
Check out these solar string lights – 14 bulbs with a string that’s 420 inches long, meaning you can place your solar lights up to 32 inches apart. What we like most about this particular solar kit is there’s only one charging unit needed for the whole lot and each light has its own hook, so you can get creative by hanging the lights in trees, bushes or fencing.
Rock Solar Lights
Have we found the cheapest solar rock light ever? At less than $10, the Mini Solar Rock Spot Light B from Silicon Solar really looks like it came directly from a rock quarry to your garden.
Each solar rock light is a self-contained unit, so no trailing wires and setup is instant – just position and relax.
It’ll switch on and off automatically at dawn and dusk but there’s also a manual overide switch if you need it.
One great thing about rock lights is if you change your mind about where it should go you can move it instantly – no clamps or screws to worry about. Landscape solar lighting for the lazy!
Cheap But Good Solar Lantern
No one likes a nice solar lantern more than me – trouble is they can be expensive. Here’s a solar lantern from 21st Century Goods that’s both good on price and features.
The Soladyne 7450 solar lantern comes with 12 bright LEDs and a built in solar panel that can provide 7 hours of eco-friendly light from 10 hours of bright sunshine. What if you don’t get 10 hours of bright sunshine on any particular day? No problem, it comes with a hand crank for when solar charging isn’t available. One minute of winding will give you half an hour of light.
Alternatively, you can charge the lantern using a 12 volt cigarette lighter adapter (included) or with an optional AC charger.
Quality Solar Deck Lights
Although it’s easy enough to source solar powered deck lights these days, the problem is often that its difficult to find lights that actually give a decent amount of light. This is particularly a problem with cheaper types of deck lights – they usually don’t have a very bright light to begin but also often only have limited openings for the light to come out from.
Not so the solar deck lights from Kansas based Moonlight Decks. The lights are big – three inches tall and 4.5 inches in diameter – and designed in transparent acrylic so the light is bright and emits in all directions.
