Category Installation & How-To

Every November my inbox fills up with the same question, usually from somewhere gray like Seattle or Pittsburgh: the sky…

The first path light I ever lost disappeared three days after I planted it. No storm, no raccoon – just…

Where to place solar lights is a sun question wearing a design costume. Everyone starts by asking where the lights…

Knowing how to install solar wall lights is really knowing your wall. The light is the easy part – two…

You’ve seen both failures in your own neighborhood. One house lines up path lights every four feet in a dead-straight…

Learning how to install solar path lights takes one afternoon, and most of that afternoon isn’t planting. Pushing stakes into…

Every solar light with a remote panel has a cable connecting the panel to the fixture. The cable is a…

I got a call last September from a client who had lost 14 solar path lights in a single overnight…

Stucco and adobe are unforgiving surfaces. They look beautiful, they suit desert and Mediterranean architecture, and they are the worst…

Brick is one of the best wall materials for mounting solar lights, and also one of the most misunderstood. The…

Mounting solar lights on metal siding sounds simple until you actually do it. The first time I tried, I treated…

Stone walls look gorgeous with solar lights grazing up the face of them. Getting the lights onto the stone is…

The solar panel is the part of a solar light that nobody wants to see. The light itself can be…

Most solar lights come as self-contained units with a panel, a battery, and a light head all in one package.…

If you run a lot of solar lights with removable batteries, you eventually hit a wall. The lights in shade…