Printer Friendly Page

Linear Lighting

The illumination of a structure or a linear feature by using lines of lighting to outline the shape or emphasise geometry can add drama to bolder garden lighting schemes, especially those in modern gardens where lighting technique is seen as synchronous to contemporary landscaping.

Stringlighting is familiar to most Christians for the small lights strung on a Christmas tree, but other religions have festivals for which such lighting is also used – Hanukkah, Ramadan and Divali to name three. Retail “Christmas lighting” products described as for exterior use are not designed for long-term outdoor applications, mainly because of short lamp life, and the transformers supplied with them are often not rated for permanent exterior installation. Consider a more permanent display using Elipta tree stringlight, which has much longer life Xenon lamps, up to 20,000 hours. That means you can put them up in a tree and forget about them for several years, just switching them on when you want to instead of getting the ladder out to put temporary ones up every time Christmas or a party comes around. The most stylish way of using stringlighting in anything other than a dense conifer, is to achieve an “outlining” effect on a tree with a less dense canopy. Fix the stringlighting up the trunk and along the branches so that the finished effect is lines of lights tracing out the structure of the tree. Tie the string into place with degradable garden twine that will break if the tree outgrows its grip; don’t use plastic fixings such as plastic electrical ties or metal wire as this could throttle a growing branch. Where cable clips need to be fixed onto the trunk, use stainless steel pins; never use brass screws as these poison many types of tree. The lamps are under 10mm in diameter and are rated at around one watt each. Use the brown cable version for tree trunks and branches and timber structures and the green cable version for Christmas trees and “spiral wrap” lighting of topiary spheres.

Elipta's stringlight is 12v and needs power from a transformer such as the B9401 electronic exterior transformer which can power one or two 50 watt stringlights