Category Installation & How-To

The best deck light I ever helped install went up in under five minutes, and the drill never left the…

I will confess my worst installation moment. The first time I mounted a solar wall light on brick, I drilled…

Charge, cover, compare, sort. Four moves, one afternoon, and it prevents the specific misery of discovering a dud after it…

The best string-light yard on my block has exactly zero trees. I noticed this from the alley in September: two…

The morning of October 31 two years ago, my neighbor walked her front bed counting solar path lights and came…

I noticed it from the kitchen window, which is where I notice most things that are technically the yard’s fault.…

Nine on a Tuesday night in June, and I was standing at the end of a neighbor’s newly planted walkway…

Every first week of October, the boxwoods next door start glowing orange. It took me two years to figure out…

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…