Take baby steps with the best outdoor solar lights

Outdoor solar lights do everything from accenting your beautiful landscape work to improving the safety and security of your home to simply lighting the path to your front door. Chances are, if it¡¯s something outside, there¡¯s a solar light to suit your needs! Here we check out the best outdoor solar lights for 2018 and look at what you need to know before making any decisions.

The Best Outdoor Solar Lights for 2018
There are hundreds of different solar lights out there to light up your yard and home exterior. You can basically find any light you need and it can be a daunting task to narrow down your options.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Outdoor Solar Lights
Solar lights are pretty simple pieces of equipment. Generally speaking, you can just put them in your yard and forget about them. Still, here¡¯s a few tips to help you get the most out of your lights for as long as possible.

Place solar panel in a well-lit area ¨C Solar panels need light to function. As such, your solar lights really won¡¯t work if you install them in a shaded area. It¡¯s the one drawback of solar lights. If you need to light an area that sees little sunlight, you¡¯ll likely want to limit your search to lights that include solar panels on a swivel hinge or separate solar panels attached via a wire.
If they start to get weak, chances are it¡¯s the battery ¨C No battery lasts forever, so if you notice your lights simply aren¡¯t as bright as they once were, or aren¡¯t lasting as long, your battery is probably dying. If they¡¯re replaceable, just pull open the back and put a new one in. If they aren¡¯t, you¡¯ll have to just toss the entire fixture and get a new one. But hopefully it will be years before this happens!
Remember where you put them ¨C This really only goes for the lights installed with stakes in the yard, but it is very easy to forget where they are when you¡¯re doing yard work. Between feet, the lawn mower, and the weed eater, the author started with 8 path lights, and is now down to just one.
How Do Solar Lights Work?
Solar lights are actually the most simple form of solar power around, but they work just like any off-grid solar system.

First, a small solar panel -typically attached to the top of the light ¨C collects sunlight and turns it into electricity. The electricity then flows to a battery (usually a AA or equivalent) where it¡¯s stored for use later. When the light is turned on ¨C typically automatically as the sun goes down ¨C the electricity flows from the battery to the LED lights. When the battery is out of juice or the sun comes up, the lights turn off. Once the sun¡¯s out, the solar panels start charging the batteries again to repeat the process.

Once installed, solar lights are very hands-off. You don¡¯t need to maintain them. You don¡¯t need to charge them or turn them on. They¡¯re about the easiest things to take care of!

Typically, solar lights use light-emitting diodes (LEDs), as opposed to incandescent or compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). LEDs are more energy efficient, waste less energy in the form of heat, and last a lot longer than other bulbs.

Solar lights can be used for anything an ¡®ordinary¡¯ outdoor light can do. Solar path lights provide a nice glow so you don¡¯t lose your step. Spotlights help accentuate a particularly beautiful tree or plant. Solar security lights provide safety. And so on. You can find pretty much any type of light in a solar-powered version!

Advantages of Solar Outdoor Lights
Solar outdoor lights enjoy a handful of benefits over ¡®normal¡¯ lights.

Easy to Install ¨C Unlike lights tied into your home¡¯s electricity, solar lights are very easy to install. You don¡¯t need to run wiring from your house. You don¡¯t need to worry about water-tight connections. You don¡¯t even have to plan ahead. With solar lights, all you do is open the box and stick the lights in the ground or on the wall. Since each light is self-contained with light, battery, and panel, you don¡¯t have any wires to run or electrical connections to make. Quite literally anyone could install solar lights!
Free Power ¨C Unlike conventional lights that run off electricity from the utility, your outdoor solar lights are run off the sun! With this free energy source, you¡¯ll never have to pay for the juice your lights use. You could have 1 light or 1,000 in your yard ¨C it doesn¡¯t matter, it¡¯s all free electricity!
Cheap to Buy ¨C Solar lights are about the same price as a standard outdoor light. Of course, both solar and conventional lights have their designer models, but overall, you aren¡¯t going to empty your bank account on solar lights.
Cheap to purchase, easy to install, and free electricity. Talk about a win-win-win!

Things to Watch Out For
You¡¯ll inevitably have questions about the lights you¡¯re looking at. How bright are they? How much space do they illuminate? How long will the batteries last? Thankfully, there¡¯s no guess work involved to find this info out. Manufacturers oftentimes include all this info right up front, but you¡¯ll need to understand some lingo to really know what you¡¯re buying.

Lumens
All lights have a lumen rating, which is a measure of the brightness of a light. Lumens range from just 1 lumen to 1400 or more. High-quality lights typically proudly advertise their rated lumens, but cheaper lights oftentimes don¡¯t. Higher lumens usually means a higher price, but low lumens aren¡¯t always bad. Accent lights or relaxing string lights typically have very low lumens to create a nice, pleasant atmosphere. In fact, some path lights are a single lumen, but the more expensive options jump up to 10 or so.

If you¡¯re looking at spotlights and security lights on the other hand, you¡¯ll want a higher lumen rating in order for the light to cover more area. The cheaper security lights are rated around 200 lumens, but can jump up to a blinding 1400 for the more expensive options.

Helpful tip: On Amazon, some manufacturers don¡¯t readily provide the lumen rating. In this case, scroll down to the ¡®questions¡¯ section and type in ¡®lumen¡¯. Oftentimes, other Amazonites have asked this exact question to the community, with helpful results!

Range
Another measurement of how much the light will illuminate is the range, or distance from the lamp the light will illuminate. This can be as small as a couple feet for accent lights to 50 feet or more for spotlights.

Be sure to get a light with a large enough range to illuminate the desired area. A 15 foot range might seem like enough when you¡¯re sitting in front of your computer, but when you go out to your driveway, you realize just how short that really is. If you want to be absolutely sure you¡¯re buying the right light, measure the distance you need to illuminate before buying.

Helpful tip: The average human stride is just under 2.5 feet, so go outside and take a quick walk to measure the distance of the area. It only takes a second, but can save you a mild headache later on.

If you¡¯re buying path lights to light your sidewalk, take a look at the range to figure out exactly how many you need. In fact, on Amazon product pages, previous buyers will often recommend how frequently to place these specific path lights ¨C every 3 feet for example ¨C for maximum usefulness and aesthetics.

Batteries
Batteries will typically be the limiting factor in your solar lights¡¯ lifespan ¨C they¡¯ll die out before anything else goes kaput. This isn¡¯t a huge deal if you¡¯re buying a couple dollar lights that you can replace in a year or two. But if you¡¯re buying dozens to light your path, or more expensive security lights, it pays to take a minute to read about the different batteries manufacturers use in their lights.

Outdoor solar lights typically have two options: a non-replaceable, built-in battery or replaceable batteries. Cheaper models typically include non-replaceable batteries, but that¡¯s not a rule by any means.

Different lights also use different battery technologies. The most common technologies are rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (size 18650 ¨C the ¡®standard¡¯ for rechargeable lithium) or conventional rechargeable AAs (either nickel-metal hydride [NiMH] or nickel-cadmium [NiCd], both very common).

All the battery technologies above will work great, but each does have their own benefits and drawbacks. Generally speaking, lithium charges faster and are smaller than the others, but it can be difficult to find the size you need, as lithium battery sizes aren¡¯t as standardized as the others (there¡¯s no standard AA size for lithium batteries yet!)

On the day-to-day level, lumens and range ¨C more than battery type ¨C will affect your experience, so focus in on these considerations instead of battery type.

Lighting Mode and Sensor
The most basic accent and path lights include a simple light sensor to automatically turn on from dusk to dawn. Higher-end security lights, on the other hand, will have a few different settings to tweak to your exact needs ¨C high and low-light options, motion sensor settings, etc.

Overall, available settings typically match needs. You don¡¯t really need a lot of settings for a cheap accent light, but security lights need to be tweaked to your needs so you feel safe. All manufacturers note what sensors and capabilities their lights have, so it¡¯s easy to find what you need.