Know What You’re Getting with Inexpensive Landcape Lighting Kits

A beautifully landscaped garden is a treat for family and guests alike, but even more so when the escape can be carried past daylight hours and into the night. To get there requires the inclusion of landscape lighting in your garden design, a prospect once considered frustrating to implement and prohibitively expensive. The good news is that there is a convenient, easy-to-install and cost effective solution in the form of inexpensive landscape lighting kits. The bad news is that, if you don’t know their limitations, you could wind up very disappointed with your results.

Inexpensive landscape lighting kits manufactured by companies like Malibu seem like a great idea. It’s important that you know that there are limitations inherent in their plastic construction that put them at a disadvantage relative to their metal counterparts. Not knowing those limitations can lead to disappointment and we don’t want that so this article will help you understand the good, bad and ugly (not necessarily in that order) about plastic landscape lighting kits. Just be sure to read to the end before you make your decision.

Let’s get the ugly out of the way first as it’s really the easiest to cover. Plastic landscape lighting kits aren’t pretty. I don’t mean to imply that they are repulsive, just that their low-cost manufacturing and molded plastic parts lack the variety and intricate design options you might find in their metal counterparts.

Truly inexpensive landscape lighting kits will be made of plastic and will have what can best be described as a dime-a-dozen look. There won’t be any variety in your kit. All the lights will look the same excepting cases in which you buy a kit containing path and spot lights. In that case, all the path lights will look the same and all the spotlights will look the same. Of course, remember that you’re trying to save money here so variety and unique features are two of the sacrifices you’ll have to make.

As for the bad, well you shouldn’t expect a great deal of illumination out of your inexpensive plastic landscape lighting kit. The very material they’re made of is the limiting factor here. Plastic has a much lower melting point than metal so that limits the wattage of the bulbs that can be used. If your hope is to bathe acres of landscape in a brilliant glow, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and shell out more coin for more expensive metal lights.

With the ugly and the bad out of the way, let’s cover the good and discuss why you might actually want to consider landscape lighting kits. The first plus, which we’ve already touched on, is price. But what exactly do we mean by inexpensive. Well, to put it into perspective, let’s use Malibu (mind you, there are other great kit manufacturers out there, I’m just using them for convenience) as an example. Malibu manufactures a 20 light plastic kit with power pack and cable included which retails for around $60USD. They also manufacture a metal kit with only 6 lights which retails for just shy of $120USD. So there’s your frame of reference; less than half the lights for around twice the price.

Now that we have the negatives out of the way, let’s go over what’s good about inexpensive plastic landscape lighting kits and that means discussing cost. I’ve already mentioned they are cheap, but what does that really mean? Well, going back to Malibu as an example, you can get a 20 piece plastic kit from Malibu containing 16 path lights and 4 spot lights, a power pack and all the cable you’ll need for about $60 USD. Compare that with a metal kit by the same company containing only 6 lights for around $120 USD and you see what I mean when I say inexpensive.

Last but not least is the simple fact that, despite plastic seeming to be an inferior material, it is practically indistinguishable from metal at night and it is also surprisingly durable. Your plastic lights will weather well and will withstand wear and tear you might not have even considered. For example, my metal lights have unsightly dents and dings caused by debris cast from lawnmowers. Your plastic lights will probably survive the same abuse with barely a scratch. If not, well, just go back to the point that they’re cheap to replace.

Having read this far I hope you’ve come to appreciate that there are some definite up sides to plastic landscape lighting kits including initial cost, replacement cost and durability. Saving money is the big selling point. Just know that you will be limited to using them to define paths and borders or spot lighting smaller features. If you have grander ambitions involving uplighting trees and statuary, you be better served by more expensive, higher-wattage metal lights.