Hastings Garden Lighting Co.

Garden Lighting Design & Installation in Hastings & East Sussex

Schemes designed on site and specified for the coast. Covering Hastings, St Leonards, Bexhill, Battle and Rye — TN31 to TN40.

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  • Designed on site, in the garden itself — never off a photograph
  • Brass or 316 marine-grade within a mile of the sea
  • Cable routes recorded and handed to you in writing

Four months a year, your garden is only ever dark

On 12 December the sun sets over Hastings at 3:53pm. The shortest day here is eight hours long. From late October to the middle of February, anyone working normal hours does not see their own garden in daylight on a weekday — the planting, the paving and the retaining walls that cost £15,000 to £40,000 exist only at weekends.

Lighting is the last ten per cent of a garden project and the part that decides how much of the other ninety per cent gets used. Done properly it is not floodlighting. It is three or four watts at a time, aimed at the things worth looking at.

What a scheme is actually made of

A designed scheme layers three things: functional light on paths, steps and entrances, ambient light washed across walls and planting, and accent light on the two or three things worth singling out. A scheme with only one layer looks flat.

Garden lighting fittings and typical specification
FittingWhat it doesTypical spec
Spike uplightPushed into soil, aimed up at a tree, wall or shrub3–8W, 10°–60° beam, 2700K
In-ground uplightRecessed flush into paving or gravelIP67 minimum, drive-over rated in a driveway
Bollard / path lightThrows light down and out along a route300–900mm tall, 3–10W
Step light / brick lightRecessed into a riser or retaining wall1–3W, tight downward throw
Deck lightSmall recessed puck in decking boards0.5–1W, IP67
Wall washer / grazerRakes light across a vertical surface30°–120°, mounted close to the wall for texture
MoonlighterMounted high in a tree, shining down through the canopy3–8W, wide beam, warm
PIR floodlightMotion-triggered security light, on its own zone10–30W LED
Pond / underwaterSubmerged in waterIP68 — IP67 will fail

Beam angle is the detail most schemes get wrong. A 10°–15° beam grazes a tall trunk or a chimney; a 38°–60° beam washes a shrub or a flint wall. Get it the wrong way round and the garden looks like a car park.

Colour temperature is the other one. 2700K for planting, 3000K at most for hard landscaping and modern architecture. Nothing at 4000K or above goes in a garden — it turns foliage grey-blue. CRI 80 minimum, 90 or better where the planting is the point.

Salt air will take 304 stainless apart in two winters

Hastings, St Leonards and Bexhill sit on the Channel with the prevailing wind coming off it. Chloride in the air pits and tea-stains ordinary 304 stainless steel, which is what "stainless" means on most fittings sold online. In a seafront garden that shows within one or two winters.

What survives: solid brass, which does not corrode and patinates brown then green; copper, which does the same faster; and 316 marine-grade stainless, which contains molybdenum and resists chloride pitting. Powder-coated aluminium is fine inland, but every chip in the coating becomes a corrosion site.

The rule we specify to

  • Within 1 mile of the sea — brass or 316 as standard
  • 1 to 3 miles — 316 minimum
  • Further inland, towards Battle and Robertsbridge — quality coated aluminium is fine

Fixings matter as much as fittings. A brass light on plated steel screws fails at the screws, so A4/316 stainless throughout. Joints go in gel-filled or resin-filled connectors, never screw terminals in wet ground. And coastal fittings get a fresh-water rinse twice a year, which materially extends their life and which almost nobody tells homeowners.

How it works

  1. Site survey. We walk the garden with a set of demo fittings and work out what is worth lighting and what is better left black.

  2. Lighting plan. A fitting schedule with positions, beam angles, wattages, colour temperature, transformer sizing and cable routes. You own the plan whether or not we install it.

  3. Installation. 12V SELV off a mains-fed transformer for the decorative scheme. Cable at 450mm minimum under lawn and borders, 600mm under anything vehicles cross, laid on a sand bed with warning tape roughly 250mm down.

  4. Commissioning. Aiming, shielding, dimming and timer settings done at commissioning, not left to you. You get the cable route plan, the fitting schedule, and the electrical certificate — an Electrical Installation Certificate for a new circuit, a Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate for an addition to an existing one. Your buyer's solicitor will ask for it one day.

What it costs

These are guide ranges for supply and installation, not quotes. A written quote states the total you pay, including VAT, with nothing unavoidable added afterwards.

Guide price ranges for garden lighting schemes
SchemeFittingsGuide range
Security lighting only2–4£600–£1,400
Path and step lighting4–6£1,000–£2,000
Mid-range garden scheme8–15£2,400–£5,000
Comprehensive landscape scheme15–30+£6,000–£10,000+
Designed scheme, premium brass fittings20–40£12,000–£30,000+

What moves the price

Cable runs, not fittings, usually decide the cost. Hand-trenching through lawn and borders runs at three to five metres an hour; crossing a laid patio or a block driveway costs several times what crossing grass does. After that: whether a new mains circuit is needed, fitting material grade (a mid-range 12V uplight is £80–£300 supplied and fitted, coastal-grade brass is £240–£600 and up), how many transformers voltage drop forces you into, ground conditions, and how many terraces the garden steps down.

What it costs to run

Twelve 12V LED fittings at around 5W each draw roughly 60W. Run six hours a night that is about 0.36 kWh a day, near enough 130 kWh a year — a few tens of pounds at typical UK unit rates. A single 500W halogen flood uses more in an hour than that whole scheme uses in a night.

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Two worked examples

Worked examples, not case studies — this site is new and we don't publish other people's installations as our own.

Example 1 — a terraced garden in Clive Vale.

Three levels stepping down from the house, brick risers, a mature magnolia on the middle terrace. One 12V circuit off a 150W transformer in the garage, eight 1–3W step lights recessed into the risers, two 30° spike uplights into the magnolia from opposite sides, and one moonlighter high in the same tree throwing dappled shadow down onto the middle terrace. Eleven fittings — the 8–15 band above. The cost driver here is the cable run up three retaining walls, not the lights.

Example 2 — a front garden and steps in TN38, three streets back from the seafront.

Solid brass throughout with A4 stainless fixings, because 304 would be streaking by the second winter. Four IP67 in-ground uplights set into the path, two wall grazers at 60° raking across the flint boundary wall, a bollard at the gate, and a separate mains PIR flood on the side return zoned so it doesn't trigger with the decorative scheme. Coastal-grade fittings put this above the mid-range band even at nine fittings.

Book it in August or September

The trade's demand climbs from late August, peaks from late September through November and holds to Christmas. Book in August or September and you get a choice of dates, dry ground to trench, and the scheme running before the clocks go back. Leave it to October and the good installers are booked out, the ground is wet, and the work has to fit into four hours of usable daylight.

Where we work

  • Hastings — TN34 and TN35.

    Old Town, West Hill, East Hill, Clive Vale, Ore, Blacklands, Bohemia, Braybrooke, Halton, St Helens, Broomgrove, Baldslow, and the streets around Alexandra Park. Steep terraced gardens are near-universal here, which makes step and retaining-wall lighting the backbone of most schemes.

  • St Leonards-on-Sea — TN37 and TN38.

    Burtons' St Leonards, Warrior Square, Markwick Terrace, Silverhill, Hollington. Regency and Victorian seafront terraces, communal gardens, and enough salt exposure that brass or 316 is the default rather than the upgrade.

  • Bexhill-on-Sea — TN39 and TN40.

    Little Common, Sidley, Cooden, Collington. Larger level plots and a lot of bungalows with generous gardens — good territory for path and border schemes. Very exposed along the seafront.

  • Battle — TN33.

    Inland and far less corrosive, larger rural plots, mature trees and period properties. Tree downlighting and driveway schemes do well here.

  • Rye — TN31.

    The Citadel, the cobbles, and extensive listed-building constraint. Holiday lets and restaurants with courtyards are as much of the market here as private gardens.

Also covering Fairlight, Pett, Winchelsea, Westfield, Sedlescombe, Ninfield and Robertsbridge.

Hastings borough has 18 conservation areas and a heavy concentration of listed buildings in the Old Town. External lighting on a domestic property does not normally need planning permission, but fixing a light to a listed building alters its fabric and can require listed building consent. We check the position with Hastings Borough Council, or Rother District Council for Bexhill, Battle and Rye, before we quote rather than after.

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FAQ

Tell us about the garden

Send the postcode and a line about the garden and you'll get a call back to arrange a survey. Written terms and a cancellation notice come with every quote.

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