I’ll be honest about where this article comes from. My wife sent me a TikTok video last fall where someone took a $2 solar path light, pulled the top off, stuck it in a mason jar, and hung it from a tree branch. It looked magical — like a floating jar of fireflies. She sent it with the caption “you could do this.” She was right. I could. And I did. And then I went down a rabbit hole of DIY solar light projects that lasted most of the winter, because once you realize how modular these things are, you start seeing possibilities everywhere.
The basic insight behind almost every solar light hack is this: a solar light is just five components — a panel, a battery, a sensor, an LED, and a housing. The housing is the only part that’s fixed. If you can remove the working parts from the housing and put them in something else, you’ve got a custom solar light for basically nothing.
Here are ten projects I’ve actually built, ranked from easiest to hardest. None of them require special tools or skills. Most of them use stuff you already have lying around.
1. Mason Jar Solar Lanterns (The TikTok Classic)
This is the one that started it all for me, and it’s still the best bang-for-buck project on this list. You take a standard solar path light — the kind with a stake on the bottom and a light housing on top — and you separate the top portion (panel, battery, LED) from the stake. On most cheap path lights, this is a twist-off or pull-apart connection. No tools needed.
Then you take a mason jar and use the solar light top as the lid. On a standard wide-mouth mason jar, the solar light top is almost exactly the right diameter to sit on top of the jar opening. You can secure it with a ring of hot glue around the rim, or if you’re more crafty, you can cut a hole in a canning lid and screw the solar top through it.
The jar becomes a diffuser. The LED sits inside the jar, and the glass softens and spreads the light. At night, it glows like a lantern. During the day, the solar panel on top charges the battery. Hang it from a tree with twine, set it on a table, or line them up along a fence. Total cost: $2 for the solar light, $1 for the mason jar (if you don’t already have one).
The trick is to use frosted or textured glass if you can find it. Clear glass shows the LED as a harsh point of light. Frosted glass diffuses it into a soft glow. You can frost a clear jar with spray frosting (about $5 for a can that does 20+ jars) or by coating the inside with a thin layer of Elmer’s glue mixed with a drop of water.
2. The Wire Basket Light Ball
This one went viral on social media, and for good reason. You take one of those wire hanging baskets — the kind meant for hanging plants, with an open wire frame — and you thread 10-15 cheap solar path lights through the wire mesh from the inside, so the light heads poke out through the gaps and the stakes are trapped inside. Hang the basket from a tree branch or pergola, and at night you have a glowing sphere of light.
The beauty of this project is that each light operates independently. If one dies, the rest keep going. And because the lights are held in place by the wire mesh, you don’t need any adhesive or fasteners. Just push them through and let the wire grip them.
I used a 14-inch wire basket and 12 solar path lights from a $25 multi-pack. The result is a 14-inch glowing ball that hangs from my pergola and looks like something from a high-end garden catalog. Total cost: $25 (basket included, because I already had it — if you need to buy one, add $8-12).
One thing I learned: face all the solar panels upward when you insert them. If a panel faces sideways or down, it won’t charge. I had to reposition three lights after the first night because they were dim — their panels were pointing at the wire frame instead of the sky.
3. Solar Light Chimes
This is a variation on the mason jar idea, but with a completely different look. You need solar path lights (the top portions), small bells or metal tubes (wind chime tubes work great), fishing line, and a circular metal ring or embroidery hoop.
Hang the metal ring from a tree or pergola. From the ring, suspend 5-8 solar light tops at different lengths using fishing line. Between or below each light, hang a small bell or chime tube. The solar lights charge during the day and glow at night. The chimes make sound in the breeze.
The visual effect is a cluster of floating glowing points at different heights, gently swaying and chiming. It’s one of those projects that looks way more expensive than it is. I made one for my mother-in-law’s birthday and she thought I’d bought it from a boutique.
The challenge: the solar lights need to stay upright (panel facing up) to charge. If they swing too much in the wind, they’ll tilt and lose sun exposure. Use a small washer or nut glued to the bottom of each light top to add weight and keep it hanging upright. A dab of hot glue on the fishing line knot keeps everything from sliding.
4. The Solar Chandelier
This one takes more effort but produces a genuinely stunning result. Find an old chandelier — thrift stores, yard sales, and Facebook Marketplace are full of them for $5-15. Remove all the light bulbs and wiring. You’re left with a metal frame with empty light sockets.
At each socket, mount the top of a solar path light using epoxy or a small bracket. The solar panel faces up (mounted where the bulb used to be), and the LED points downward. At night, the chandelier glows from each former bulb position.
Hang it from a pergola, gazebo, or strong tree branch. The metal frame of the chandelier catches light during the day and the solar panels charge. At dusk, all the LEDs turn on simultaneously (because they all have the same photocell threshold) and you have a solar chandelier that looks like it belongs at an outdoor wedding venue.
I used an 8-arm chandelier and 8 solar light tops. Total project cost: about $35 ($10 for the chandelier, $25 for a 12-pack of solar lights — I had 4 left over). It took about 2 hours to build, mostly because removing the old wiring from the chandelier was fiddly.
One warning: these are heavy. Use a sturdy hook and a strong chain. The chandelier frame plus 8 solar lights plus epoxy is probably 8-10 pounds. Hang it from something that can support the weight, not a flimsy plant hook.
5. Glowing Planters
Take a solar path light, remove the stake, and push the light top down into the soil of a potted plant so the panel sits at soil level, facing up. The light shines upward through the plant foliage at night, creating an uplighting effect inside the planter.
This works best with larger planters — 12 inches or wider — and plants with interesting foliage structure (ferns, grasses, coleus). The light from below creates dramatic shadows of the leaves on walls and ceilings above. It’s a subtle effect that looks incredibly designed.
The trick is to position the light so the panel isn’t shaded by the plant’s foliage. You might need to place it at the edge of the pot rather than in the center, or trim back a few leaves that are blocking the panel. If the plant is too dense, the light won’t charge — same problem as uplighting a tree.
6. Solar Light Walkway Edging (The Hidden Strip)
Instead of staking solar path lights vertically along a walkway, lay them on their sides and bury them in a shallow trench along the edge of the path, so only the top of the light (the panel and LED) is visible at ground level. This creates a strip of light embedded in the ground, like an airport runway edge light.
It’s a completely different look from traditional vertical path lights — more modern, more architectural, less “suburban garden.” The light shines sideways across the path surface rather than downward, which actually does a better job of illuminating the walking surface.
The challenge is keeping the lights in place. I used a shallow trench (about 2 inches deep) lined with landscape fabric, with the lights laid in and held in place by packed gravel on both sides. The panel faces sideways, which means it only gets morning or afternoon sun depending on which direction the path runs. For a north-south path, both sides get sun. For an east-west path, only the south-facing side gets good sun.
7. Bottle Tree Lights
If you live in the South (or just like the aesthetic), you know about bottle trees — dead trees or metal frames with colored glass bottles stuck on the branches. They’re folk art, and they look great during the day. At night, they disappear.
Drop a solar fairy light (the tiny LEDs on a thin flexible wire, powered by a small solar panel) into each bottle before you mount it on the tree. The solar panel sits at the bottle opening, and the LED wire trails down inside. At night, each bottle glows from within. The colored glass filters the LED light, so a blue bottle glows blue, a green bottle glows green, a red bottle glows red.
This is one of the easiest projects on this list. The solar fairy lights are $5-8 per set, and each set comes with 10-20 feet of wire — enough for several bottles. Just stuff the wire into the bottle, let the panel sit at the top, and mount the bottle on your bottle tree.
8. Solar-Powered Garden Art Illumination
If you have garden sculptures, gazing balls, or other decorative yard art, a single solar spotlight aimed at the piece from 2-3 feet away transforms it at night. But instead of buying a dedicated solar spotlight, you can use a solar path light with the diffuser removed.
Most path lights have a removable lens or diffuser that softens the LED output. Pop it off, and you have a bare LED that throws a more focused, intense beam — not quite a spotlight, but brighter and more directional than a standard path light. Aim it at your garden art and you have accent lighting for $2.
The bare LED won’t have the throw of a real spotlight (maybe 3-5 feet of useful range instead of 10-15), but for small pieces — gazing balls, garden gnomes, small statues — it’s plenty. And at $2 per light, you can afford to light every piece in your garden.
9. The Solar Luminaria Bag Line
This is a holiday trick that works year-round. Take paper lunch bags (white or brown), put 2 inches of sand in the bottom for weight, and place a solar path light (with stake removed) inside each bag. Line them along a driveway, walkway, or porch edge.
The paper bag diffuses the light into a warm, soft glow that’s completely different from the harsh point light of the bare LED. It looks like traditional candle luminarias — the kind used in Southwest holiday traditions — but without the fire risk.
During the day, the solar panel sticks out of the top of the bag and charges. At night, the LED illuminates the bag from inside. The bags will eventually degrade in rain, so this is more of a temporary/event installation than a permanent one. For permanent use, replace the paper bags with frosted plastic bags or small frosted glass cylinders.
10. The Solar Light Ceiling (Pergola Glow Grid)
This is the most ambitious project on the list, and it’s the one I’m proudest of. I attached a grid of chicken wire to the underside of my pergola, then wove 20-30 solar fairy light strands through the wire grid. Each strand has its own small solar panel, which I mounted on top of the pergola where it gets full sun.
At night, the entire pergola ceiling glows with hundreds of tiny light points. It looks like sitting under a starry sky. The effect is genuinely spectacular, and people who see it always ask where I bought it.
The cost was about $60 — $40 for four sets of solar fairy lights (each with 30-50 LEDs) and $20 for the chicken wire and zip ties. Installation took about 3 hours, most of which was spent weaving the light strands through the wire in a pattern that looked random rather than gridded.
The maintenance is the only downside. When a fairy light strand dies (and they do — the wires are fragile and connections fail after 1-2 years of outdoor exposure), you have to remove it from the grid and weave in a replacement. I lose about 1-2 strands per year and replace them for $10 each. It’s worth it for the effect.
A Few Things I Learned the Hard Way
Not every solar light hack works with every solar light. Here are some practical notes:
Cheap path lights are the most hackable. The $2 path lights from a 12-pack have the simplest construction — the top twists or pulls off the stake, and the battery is usually accessible under a twist cap. More expensive lights with sealed housings are harder to take apart without breaking them.
Waterproofing is your responsibility. When you remove a solar light from its housing, you’ve removed its weather protection. The battery and circuit board are now exposed. For any project that lives outside, seal the battery compartment with silicone or hot glue, and make sure water can’t pool around the electronics. I killed several projects in my first rainy season before I started taking this seriously.
Test before you commit. Before you glue, epoxy, or permanently mount anything, test the project for a few nights. Make sure the panel gets enough sun. Make sure the light turns on. Make sure the battery lasts through the night. It’s a lot easier to adjust before things are glued together.
Buy replacement batteries in bulk. These projects use the same batteries as the original lights, and they’ll need replacing every 1-2 years. A 24-pack of rechargeable AA batteries costs about $20 online and will keep all your DIY projects running for years. Buy a couple packs and you’re set.
The thing I love about these projects is that they’re forgiving. If you mess up, you’re out $2 and a mason jar. If it works, you’ve created something that looks custom and intentional for almost nothing. And every one of these projects uses the same basic solar light components that heoxo sells — just repackaged in a way that nobody else in your neighborhood has.
