When buying a garden room we focus mainly on the internal electrical specification, and this is how it should be as you will spend the bulk of your time inside your garden room, but its also worth thinking about exterior lighting at the design stage.
There are different types of exterior lighting used in garden room design, each gives a different effect. Exterior grade down-lighters fixed into the roof overhang are popular with garden room designers as they emulate the down-lighters often used in the ceiling of the garden room.
Another popular style of exterior light used in garden room design are up down lighters, as the name suggests they give out light both upwards and downwards, this style of lighting looks quite modern, and are often fixed either side of the garden room doorway.
Some garden room designers get very creative with exterior lighting, fitting LED strips under the garden room so that it appears to float on light!
Exterior lighting can be controlled by movement sensor which puts on the lights when movement is detected, this can be a useful security device, but in reality PIR lighting is quite bulky and not the most aesthetically pleasing lighting unit available – function wins over form in this argument, PIR lights tend to be flood lights, bulkhead lights or spot lights.
If you want to be able to control the exterior lighting of your garden room remotely, garden room designers can design in lighting timers so the light come on and go off at set times of day, or switches that can be controlled by remote control fob or even SMS text.
Exterior lighting is not only useful at night when popping to the garden room, it makes the garden room a feature in your garden at night – illuminated at night it looks great from the house!
Ask your garden room designer about exterior lighting at the design stage, its an easy and cost effective option to design in if not offered as standard, when you flick on the lights at night, you’ll be pleased you did!