Ideas for Lighting Your Home’s Walkway

It happens every year at Halloween. We are bombarded with tons of children, teenagers and adults fighting their way up our narrow walkway, in the dark, only to finally trip over a single step before reaching our front door. Every year we try to come up with something that will keep the everyone from falling flat on their face at our door. We have tried running colored tape across the edge and at the bottom to highlight it to laying down tube lighting and though both work to some extent, it’s no match to just having the walkway clearly lit. However, since it is Halloween we prefer to have it dark and spooky, but the number of people showing up is increasing every year so we had to make a more permanent adjustment. We also happen to be one of those families that never ever keeps the porch light on, especially since there is a street lamp right across the street. Unfortunately, that street light does nothing to illuminate the step that everyone seems to not notice until it’s too late. Our walkway wraps from the driveway up to our front door in an “L” shape and is fairly long which required several lights to achieve what we wanted. After looking for many months hoping to find a deal on something different, I finally gave up and for now purchased from Lowe’s the Malibu Solar Thatch Hut kit which gave me eight lights out the door for under $40. These are 10.5 inches in height and offer, since you get eight of them, sufficient lighting as long as they all get a reasonable amount of sun throughout the day. Of course, since the price was right, I picked up two sets giving me sixteen lights, eight up each side of the walkway. Personally, I’d prefer to have less lights with a stronger glow, but that requires wiring, which although not too hard to accomplish, is something to consider when searching for the perfect outdoor lights for your home. The upside of the solar lights is saving energy, of course, but also allows you to have a little more light on your walkway without being too bright.

If you already have electrical access near your walkway so that you can easily install lights, a really inexpensive choice is the Malibu 10-Light Tier Kit at Home Depot which comes with a 44-watt transformer and 50 feet of cable. First determine where you want the lights to be and lay them out. Using a garden trowel, simply dig a small trench about 3″ deep which you will use to bury the cable. You can just move the dirt over as the trench only needs to be wide enough to drop the thin cable into so no need to really dig and remove dirt, just enough to get a good size crack. Whatever lights you decide to install, be sure to check the manufacturer’s instructions to confirm that the wiring is weatherproof before burying it in the ground. Once you have the trench dug you want to turn on all the lights to make sure they work and if all is well, drop the cable into the trench and cover it with dirt. The transformer needs to be attached to the wall or can be staked in the ground, just make sure it’s at least one foot off the ground and within 100 feet of the light source. The purpose of the transformer is to turn normal 120-volt current and reduce it to 12 volts which makes for safer outdoor lighting. You want to plug your light kit into a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) outlet and if you don’t have one near your light source then you’ll want to install one. Most newer homes should have these already installed. I know I have at least two inside my garage as well as throughout the house. Anytime we have anything plugged in outside we run the electrical cord into the garage to use the GFCI outlet.

An option for a house that has a relatively well lit walkway, but you would like some extra light or just something decorative, then you may want to check out some of the options at Target.com as they have a few things that would beautify your walkway. The Smart Solar Frosted Dragonfly Lanterns are lovely for about $40 for a set of two. If you’re feeling a little more festive maybe you would like to have the Color Changing Solar Party Path Light which would run you about $32 a piece. If you do happen to have power already available, then I love the lights that look like rocks. Since we have a decorative concrete border along our pathway these would not work for us, but I think this is a really cool idea. You can scatter these around so that they give off different angles of light up your walkway. Target.com has a 5-piece set for right around $100 which comes with a 33 foot extension cable, which would allow you to probably just run this over to and under your garage door if you have one so you wouldn’t have to worry about an additional outlet outside if one’s not available. If you have a backyard garden area, then these would also be great back there and toss in a couple of those boulder looking stereo speakers and wallah, it’s a set.

If you have no set budget on what you can spend then one option which I think is very elegant is the pole light which works great with larger homes. These can be found at most home improvement stores with a low end price of about $100. For smaller homes I like the fancy Progress Lighting Tiffany Collection Gilded Iron 1-Piece Pathway light from Lowe’s and at $18 each, won’t break your budget if you do have one. These are elegant looking without being too big. They stand approximately 25″ in height with a beautiful art glass panels and a classic design. These are perfect for the smaller home, townhouse or even smaller walkway areas around your garden.