Know What You’re Getting with Inexpensive Landcape Lighting Kits

A beautifully landscaped garden is a treat for family and guests alike, but even more so when the escape can be carried past daylight hours and into the night. To get there requires the inclusion of landscape lighting in your garden design, a prospect once considered frustrating to implement and prohibitively expensive. The good news is that there is a convenient, easy-to-install and cost effective solution in the form of inexpensive landscape lighting kits. The bad news is that, if you don’t know their limitations, you could wind up very disappointed with your results.

Low cost landscape lighting kits such as those manufactured by companies like Malibu Lighting are, in principle, a great idea. Their plastic construction offers several advantages over designer, metal counterparts. But along with those advantages come a few disadvantages you may not be aware of, and that’s what could lead to a big letdown. We’ll go over the good, the bad and the ugly but, as you read this article, I ask you one favor; don’t make up your mind until you’ve reached the end.

Let’s get the ugly out of the way first. Plain and simple, compared to some of the amazing designer alternatives available, these lights ain’t pretty. Now, ugly may be a bit excessive, but inexpensive landscape lighting kits are generally going to be made of plastic and their designs will be fairly uninspired. Not hideous, mind you, just not as sharp as you could get if you wanted to fork over considerably more money.

Truly inexpensive landscape lighting kits will be made of plastic and will have what can best be described as a dime-a-dozen look. There won’t be any variety in your kit. All the lights will look the same excepting cases in which you buy a kit containing path and spot lights. In that case, all the path lights will look the same and all the spotlights will look the same. Of course, remember that you’re trying to save money here so variety and unique features are two of the sacrifices you’ll have to make.

Moving on to the bad, we only have one real concern and that’s in brilliance (or the lack thereof). It’s the very construction material of landscape lighting kits that hurts their performance because, as you might already be aware, plastic has a much lower melting point than metal. That lower melting point limits the heat they can endure from bulbs which means having to opt for lower wattage and, by extension, luminescence. Higher wattage bulbs common in metal lights would turn your plastic landscape light into a puddle. If you plan to light up trees and large features, you’ll have to pay the extra money for metal lights.

So with the ugly and the bad out of the way, let’s talk about why you should consider landscape lighting kits and discuss the positives. The first positive which we’ve already touched on is price but let’s put that into perspective. Malibu Lighting offers a plastic landscape lighting kit containing power cable, power pack, 6 spot lights and 14 tier lights (for paths and borders) for around $60. They also offer a nice looking metal kit containing power pack, cable 4 tiers and 2 spot lights for $117.02. That equates to less than half the lights for almost twice the price and even that metal kit is pretty low-cost compared to other sets I’ve seen out there.

What may not be so obvious in terms of savings is what you’ll save should one of your lights be damaged by a clumsy guest or an overzealous landscaper with poor lawnmower control. A damaged plastic light will cost you very little to replace. A damaged metal light, crushed by a stray lawnmower or weed-whacker will cost you substantially more. I’ve trashed one of my own lights and can assure you, this is a very valid consideration.

Last but not least is the simple fact that, despite plastic seeming to be an inferior material, it is practically indistinguishable from metal at night and it is also surprisingly durable. Your plastic lights will weather well and will withstand wear and tear you might not have even considered. For example, my metal lights have unsightly dents and dings caused by debris cast from lawnmowers. Your plastic lights will probably survive the same abuse with barely a scratch. If not, well, just go back to the point that they’re cheap to replace.

I’m glad you’ve read this far. Hopefully you can appreciate the pros and cons to plastic landscape lighting kits. Their strengths are clearly in the savings department. Allowing your expectations aren’t overly ambitious, they really are the way to go if money is tight. Unless you intend to light up a drive way or paint sweeping swaths of light into your trees, you can get good results marking out a path and lighting some small features and plants at a fraction of the cost.