1. When negotiating the steps to your door at night, you’re forced to use your cell phone as a makeshift flashlight.
There’s no question about it – inadequate step lighting is just dangerous. It’s so easy to incorporate lighting into your stairway! Don’t wait until you take a bad fall to make a change. Use this guide to determine what kind of lights are right for your steps.
2. When you’re out of town, so are the house lights.
Sure, outdoor lighting helps you negotiate dark stairways and makes your house look beautiful, but let’s be honest: It’s not just for you. It sends an important message to outsiders. When you leave home for an extended period of time, you don’t want every passerby to know it. The key here is to look for lights with photocells. Whether it’s a series of small utility lights or a light control socket you can screw your front porch lights into, photocells will enable automated lighting for your home. At dusk, the lights will turn on; at dawn, they’ll turn off again.
3. After Daylights Saving Time ends, barbecuing involves maneuvering the grill closer to your back door until you can actually see what you’re cooking.
If you’re relying on spill light to determine if the burgers are done, you’re making dinner much more difficult than it needs to be (and probably risking Salmonella). Do yourself a favor and invest in a barbecue light. It will provide the focused task lighting that you need. For a helpful buyer’s guide, see this post.
4. On cloudy days, your solar-powered path lights hardly become beacons of light after dusk.
Virtually every manufacturer of solar-powered outdoor lights claims they still shine brightly after an overcast day, but countless reviews across the web point to the fact that it’s not always true. If your solar-powered lights aren’t doing the trick, think about switching to a battery-operated LED option. It’s still incredibly efficient, and you still won’t have to worry about finding an outdoor outlet.
5. In the event of a power outage, you’d be scrambling for matches, candles, and flashlights.
When the lights go out unexpectedly, that drawer, cabinet, or closet where you keep the power outage supplies can suddenly become elusive. Ever heard of the term residential emergency lighting? It’s an entire group of products designed just for power outages. There’s even a device that automatically detects when the power goes out and sends a signal to turn on compatible battery-operated lights.