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Coloured Garden Lighting

If you want to use coloured lighting in your garden lighting scheme there are two main ways of doing it.

Colour filters are glass discs which either fit loose inside a spotlight or have a clip which fits onto the front of a lamp (usually 50mm diameter) to fit a 12v MR16 or flat fronted 240v GU10 halogen reflector lamp used in most garden spotlights. They work either by absorbing the colours of light you don’t want (absorption filters) or reflecting the unwanted colours back into the lamp (dichroic filters), leaving just the desired colour to shine though. Lighting for Gardens offers a choice of pale blue, blue, green, purple, red and yellow colour filters from stock plus the “moonlighting” filter, sometimes called a daylight correction filter, which raises the colour temperature of halogen light from 3000 to 5200 degrees kelvin to give that slightly cool lighting effect typical of moonlight. Most filters clip onto the front of an MR16 or GU10 lamp, but some spotlights have custom honeycomb filters which fit into the front bezel instead - look at the accessory list for the spotlight you are proposing to use and check that the filter you want to use will fit.

Coloured l.e.d. lighting proves much more vivid, saturated colour than colour filters in halogen spotlights, although their availability only in primary colours limits their appeal. Small blue led lights are included in Elipta’s Navigator Minor and Major ranges and offer an alternative to the “safe” choice of white light to go around a deck. Elipta’s blue Navigator l.e.d. lights are also suitable for use in paving, where the square Quad and Quo versions are sometimes preferred. In underwater lighting one of the most powerful choices is ME Lighting’s blue led Barrel lights – 5 watt l.e.d spotlights with almost the punch of a 50w halogen lamp fitted with a blue filter, and a lower power 3w alternative, both with richly saturated colours. Barrels are not cheap but their 50,000 life means no maintenance and their low energy consumption means small transformers, easy long cable runs and freedom from maintenance – lighting for life! In low voltage spotlights and especially in underwater lights the MR16-LED-3B blue led module can be retrofitted and gives an output roughly equivalent to a 35w halogen lamp fitted with a blue filter. MR16_LED_18CH is a colour changing module for smaller features.

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