Complete Guide to Outdoor Lighting
Outdoor lighting is great at extending your home’s interior style. With the right set up, patios, pathways and gardens become an extension of your home; creating a functional ‘outdoor room’. Done well, outdoor lighting adds safety, boosts curb appeal and makes your outdoor space feel like a seamless extension from inside your home.
In this guide, we’ll focus on professional-grade solutions for every area; from roofline and pergolas to gardens and pathways. You’ll find the best high-end outdoor lighting solutions and practical ideas that look great year-round.
Home Exterior & Architectural Lighting
Architectural lighting defines your home’s character by emphasizing its structure. By selecting high-density linear lighting, you can highlight gables and textures to create a sophisticated, custom-built appearance.
120V LED Neon Rope Light: Our best-selling light, delivering a bright, dot-free glow. Choose Warm White for classic style, or color-changing RGB for motion effects and colors that evolve with the seasons. Pair with aluminum mounting tracks for perfectly straight, professional lines.
Warm White LED FCOB Strip Light (IP65): Ideal for a hidden "halo" effect. Tuck these under eaves using clear mounting tracks to cast a powerful, uniform glow that creates a smooth "grazing" effect on textured surfaces like stucco, stone, or brick.
Outdoor Permanent Smart Lights (IP67): The ultimate "set it and forget it" solution. These LED string lights feature RGB+IC technology for custom motion patterns. The low-profile design stays virtually invisible during the day while delivering a brilliant, intermittent even glow at night.
Patio, Pergola & Outdoor Living Lighting
Great lighting turns your deck or pergola into a functional, cozy extension of your home—perfect for evening dining and relaxation.
Magnetic C9 Socket Spool: A "pro-secret" for metal-framed pergolas. These magnetic sockets snap onto steel beams for a straight installation and fit any lights with an E-17 base, like bistro lights and C9 holiday bulbs.
Heavy-Duty Bistro String Lights: The premier choice for a vintage "café" ambiance. Featuring commercial-grade, weatherproof sockets built for permanent, year-round outdoor use.
Custom Cut 120V LED Neon Rope Light: Magnetic C9 Socket Spool: Provides a seamless, uninterrupted glow that is perfect for outlining patio rooflines, beams, and railings. This versatile accent lighting adds a modern, high-end finish to any outdoor structure and be cut to fit your project’s unique dimensions.
Garden & Landscape Lighting
Landscape lighting adds depth and dimension to your trees, bushes, and shrubs, making your yard appear multi-dimensional after dark.
Mini LED String Lights: The expert’s choice for professional tree wraps. The unique concave lens on our wide-angle bulbs spreads light further than standard mini-lights, ensuring trunks and branches look intriguing from every angle.
LED Net Lights: A fast, professional solution for hedges and shrubs. These provide a perfectly uniform grid that drapes over greenery in minutes, ensuring consistent bulb spacing that is impossible to achieve by hand.
120V LED Rope Lights: A landscape powerhouse known for its 360-degree flexibility. Its heavy-duty PVC casing can be twisted and contorted in any direction, making it ideal for wrapping tree trunks or pillars while providing a smooth, continuous glow.
Pathway & Driveway Lighting
Beyond guiding the way, expertly lit paths define your property’s boundaries and elevate its nighttime curb appeal. By choosing low-profile, glare-free fixtures, you can upscale your landscape’s aesthetic while ensuring safe navigation.
12V Low Voltage SMD 5050 LED Strip Lights: These IP65 outdoor-rated strips are bright and deliver a high-end look for deck railings and stairs.
120V LED FCOB Strip Lights: A premium option for linear hardscape edges. Offers a seamless, dotless glow for a high-end, professional look.
120V LED Neon Rope Light: Perfect for bold, continuous lawn borders. Use with mounting accessories to keep long runs perfectly straight along pathway edges.
Seasonal LED Lights & Decor
Turn your home into the neighborhood’s main event with high-intensity LED signs and high-impact decor designed to make your house the talk of the block. Check out our entire line of Holiday LED Lights & Decor to find show-stopping options for every celebration on your calendar.
How to Waterproof Your Outdoor Lighting
One of the most important steps when installing lights outdoors is waterproofing your connections. While rope, strip, and neon lights are often labeled for indoor/outdoor use, the weak link is almost always the connection point—where your power cord meets the light, where two runs join, or at end caps. Our Waterproofing Guide & Video walk you through the essential steps to keep your connections weather-ready and your lights running bright.
How to Measure for Outdoor Lighting
Every great project starts with a plan. Measuring accurately upfront prevents mid-project surprises like overordering or running short. Our Simple Hacks To Measure for Outdoor Lighting provides the pro techniques and tools you need to measure your space with clarity and confidence.
Additional Resources & Expert Tips
Looking to take your project to the next level? Explore our library of expert guides to help you design, install, and maintain your outdoor lighting like a pro.
- The Lighting Hack That Makes Traditional Pathways Obsolete: Why linear lighting is the modern alternative to old-school stake lights.
- Where to Install Outdoor Strip Lighting: The best locations to hide, mount, and display strip lights for maximum impact.
- Outdoor LED Strip Light Installation Guide: A deep dive into choosing and mounting strip lights for a permanent, professional look.
- Pro Tips for Hanging Rope Lights: Essential techniques for clean, straight, and secure rope light installations.
- Extend the Lifespan of Your Lights: How to care for and maintain your LED investment so it lasts for seasons to come.
- Creative Backyard Inspiration: Fresh ideas for using LED strips to transform your patio and garden into a nighttime oasis.
FAQ: Expert Answers for Your Outdoor Projects
Yes, our LED rope and strip lights can be used indoors or outdoors, but they must be weatherproofed, which means they have properly sealed connections. This protects the lights against rain, dust, and yard debris. Also, the higher the IP rating, the better. A good option is our Warm White 120V FCOB LED Strip Light (148ft), which is IP65 rated and is fully encased in silicone for weather resistance and is designed for permanent outdoor installations. Please note that our lighting cannot be submerged or heavily soaked with water.
You can safely line your lawn with flexible LED linear lights such as rope lights, strip lights, neon strip lights, or neon rope lights by using the proper technique:
- Run the strip along fixed borders like garden edging, retaining walls, or fence lines—not directly across grassy areas that get mowed.
- Secure the light so it is flush with the edge of the garden edging, retaining wall, or fence line. Use Extreme Strength Double Sided Waterproof Mounting Tape on hard, smooth surfaces, or use mounting clips on surfaces that are not smooth. This prevents sagging or shifting that could lead to damage.
- If you're cutting the strip to size or making connections, seal all ends using a heat shrink weatherproofing kit to keep moisture out and maintain its outdoor rating. Our waterproofing blog includes a quick video and step-by-step guide to waterproofing rope, strip, and neon lights like a pro.
When installed properly, low-profile flexible LED rope, strip, or neon lights can add a seamless glow along pathways or garden borders—without interfering with lawn equipment or needing to be taken up each season.
For smooth surfaces like vinyl siding, brick, painted wood, or even metal trim, use mounting channels which can be secured with waterproof mounting tape or magnetic mounting tape (this tape can be used on its own for strip lights). These channels provide a clean, no drill solution and keep your lights aligned and secure while allowing for easy removal or repositioning later.
If you're installing along gutters, roof shingles, or fence posts, universal all-in-one mounting clips work well too. These clips are designed to grip onto “K” or “U” style gutters - shakes, slate, or tile roofing, and even chain link fencing or deck railings. They're compatible with any size of rope light, offering a flexible option across a variety of surfaces.
The maximum run length on the 120v LED rope lights is 180' with a standard power cord, and 600' with a high output rectifier. The max run length on 120v Strip Lights is 330' with a standard power cord. The max run length on any of our 12v linear lighting is 20'. If you require longer run lengths, you would be required to use an additional power cord.
Yes, on all of our linear lighting, you will find a stamp at the appropriate cut increment. For 120V LED products this is at every 19.5 inches, and on our 12v products it will be every 2-4 inches. Each spool comes with the appropriate power cord for the product to plug into power. Additional runs will require the use of an additional power cord.
Yes, all of our 120v linear lighting can be dimmed. Please use the appropriate dimmer for each type of lighting. Incandescent Rope Lights can be dimmed using a standard wall dimmer, for LED's please use a dimmer that is rated for use with LED lighting. 12V Products can also be dimmed, depending on your installation and application either an inline dimmer will work, or you can purchase a dimmable driver for use with a wall dimmer.
Yes, you can leave your LED strip and rope lights on all night. They are specifically engineered for continuous use, making them a safe and highly efficient choice for overnight security or decorative displays. Because LEDs stay cool to the touch even after hours of operation, they eliminate the fire and burn risks associated with traditional halogen or incandescent bulbs.
Beyond safety, running LEDs overnight is incredibly cost-effective. They consume up to 85% less energy than older lighting styles, meaning a nightly light show will have a negligible impact on your electric bill. With a professional-grade lifespan of 50,000+ hours, these lights are built for the long haul and won't be significantly impacted by staying on until sunrise.