Deck lights are nothing new and are a great enhancement for most decked areas, but with the recent development of solar landscape lighting of all kinds, inevitably solar powered deck lights have started to appear. But are they actually any good?

When you examine a solar deck light what first strikes you is how much wider they are compared to a normal deck light. There’s a good reason of course, they need the extra space for the solar collection panel, which often surrounds the central LED light and can be quite an attractive feature in itself.

Installing solar deck lighting proceeds in much the same way as for a conventional one, which involves drilling a suitable hole and pushing it in (a tight push fit, since they have to withstand foot traffic). The step you don’t have to bother with is laying cables underneath or lifting deck boards.

So far so good, but few people realise initially that whereas a regular deck light basically stays in place for life (about the same lifespan as a deck board for most LEDs), this is not the case with solar deck lighting. In common with other solar garden lights, they rely on rechargeable batteries which have to be replaced after a fixed number of charges (i.e. days).

This (not infrequent) maintenance task of course involves extracting your deck lights from their holes and locating the batteries. Neither task is necessarily straightforward; wood can expand and grip the deck light tightly, and the batteries are usually in an inaccessible, well sealed compartment.

However, the 500 pound gorilla in the room for most people is the inescapable fact that solar deck lights quite literally don’t hold a candle to conventional electric LED equivalents where luminosity is concerned. They also won’t last (battery life not withstanding) as long as standard LED deck lights. So are they worth it when they compare poorly on maintenance and performance?

Perhaps the only real benefit with solar deck lighting is the ease and speed with which you can fit it. But then, laying cables beneath a deck is not exactly demanding to begin with so it’s hardly much of a selling point. Also, with low life spans, you’ll soon have to find something else that happens to fit the same sized hole (or buy another deck board).

So are solar deck and solar patio lights worth installing? On balance, probably not, but if you want to o ahead any way (your intended location may have no easy access to electricity for example)then be sure to seek out quality units. Also make sure you can easily return them if they prove faulty or unreliable. Reputable suppliers don’t like getting returns so they try not to sell such goods in the first place.

To find out more, Danielle recommends these excellent articles that cover solar deck lighting and LED outdoor lights in general.