Don’t do it! In my opinion the LED technology isn’t quite there yet – especially with these cheap import products. Plus colour changers on exteriors can look really naff!
These little LED units just don’t last. Unless you buy very high quality architectural fittings which are so expensive they are not worth it (yet) unless they are left switched on for very long hours.
For saving money on running an exterior installation (I installed about 20 garden lights last Summer) I used a combination of the following:
1. Compact fluorescent floodlights – plastic body with a 26W or 42W TCD Lamp. Called ‘Smartflood’. These run cool and have a moulded plastic cover, so can be fitted internally with a sheet of filter gel. I used pale yellow as a wall-washer. A bit weak, and if I was buying again would probably go for No. 4 below instead. But OK for a small area.
2. Megaman Advant Floodlight: a horn-shaped unit with a 60w ES ‘Clusterlite’ CFL. Good for individual tree uplighters. They give a much wider and more even spread of light than the shape would suggest.
3. Ordinary commercial 150W or 400W Metal Halide fittings with coloured lamps. There are really excellent – modern lamps give excellent colour saturation – I used magenta and green.
4. A 125W mercury vapour commercial flood, with again a pale yellow gel inside the cover, used as a wall washer.
I used the 400W green MH to flood trees behind the house, wall-washed the house, then accented individual trees in the foreground with the Clusterlights. It took a bit of messing about to get it right (always experiment first with a few fittings on long leads), but it now looks stunning! (Modesty, eh?)
All are IP65 / IP66 so fine for an exterior mains installation. I used a combination of 1mm SWA and Hi-tuf, via Wiska boxes. The circuits are on a 30mA trip with no problems so far, so it must be watertight.
I bought all my kit from TLC Direct, except for the MH gear.
