Coloured garden lighting
If you want to use coloured garden lighting in your design, there are three 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 special filters such as 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. Look at the accessories in the range listing for the spotlight of your choice in our online shop to see which filters fit your spotlight, download the "Transformers and accessories" page from The Garden Lighting Catalogue or enter colour filters into the search box to bring up a listing.
GardenJewels is a new innovation in low voltage coloured garden lighting, capturing the beauty of light refracting through a coloured lead crystal lens at the top of a sculptural stoneware body. The lead crystal glass jewel through which the light is projected provides saturated colour to uplight trees, shrubs and structures in a choice of 8 tones with a vibrancy not achieved by any other type of colour filter. GardenJewels also refract a portion of the light forward to provide ambient lighting around an area and a beautiful jewel-like image which appears tantalisingly different from any angle of view around the patio, deck or pool.
Coloured l.e.d. garden lighting proves much more vivid, saturated colour than colour filters in halogen spotlights, although led power doesn't yet match the punch of a 50 watt halogen lamp. MicroLED linear l.e.d. lighting is used for lighting around water features, where blue is the most dramatic - and most popular - colour. Small blue led lights are included in the Patilo range and Elipta's Navigator blue l.e.d. lights for paving and decks areas come in two sizes, Mini and Midi. In spotlights the most powerful choice is ME Lighting's Barrel lights - 5 watt l.e.d spotlights with almost the punch of a 35w halogen lamp, and a lower power 3w alternative, both with richly saturated colours. Barrels are not cheap but their 50,000 hour life means no maintenance and their low energy consumption means small transformers, easy long cable runs and freedom from maintenance - lighting for life! Megabay's Omnyx II range offers and extensive choice of colours as well as mounting options in mid-range 1 watt led's. Colour changing experiments can be made using 12v products with the MR16-LED-8CH and in 240v spotlights or uplights using the GU10-LED-18CH - you'll find these listed as options with the coloured garden lights that can use them.
