Pool light buying guide

Whether it is a small kids pool in your backyard or a massive pool in your villa, pool lights change the pool's style. They improve the aesthetics of your pool and also help you provide sufficient light to use the pool at night times.

So, if you are looking to choose some light lamps for your pool, you need to consider many aspects. In this buying guide, we have discussed every element of different varieties of light lamps. You can go through it and make an informed decision while selecting anyone.

Need to read the buying guide before selecting the lighting type

When it comes to lighting, it is essential to consider the power, ease of installation, size, life, and additional features of lamps. By reading a comprehensive guide, you can familiarize yourself with all the aspects of the bulbs and prevent yourself from being duped by the fraud salesman in the market.

Why should you opt for pool lights?

Pool parties are all the rage in summers. Gathering friends, having drinks by the pool, playing water polo, and whatnot. Having a pool is fun, but what can you do to make this even better? Adding pool lights is a simple yet innovative answer. The pool lights add to the luxury of swimming at night so that your parties and fun don't stop.

Beyond extending the usability of pools in the absence of scorching heat, certain vibrance is added to the area. It can even help enhance the look of the make of the swimming pool and surrounding areas, highlighting the architectural elements and giving it a certain pizazz. With viable options flooding the markets, you can choose the lights that fulfill your criteria of a magical swimming pool.

Types of Pool Lights

Pool lights mainly come in three varieties – incandescent, halogen and LED. Each type of light has its advantages and drawbacks.

1. Incandescent lights are the oldest style of lightbulbs. They are inexpensive and readily available. They have a yellow light output, which may not be highly preferred. They may require changing twice a year.
2. Halogen lights are the modern bulb, the more technologically advanced light emitter as compared to incandescent lamps. They have a longer life span, which means less maintenance and less frequent replacement. They work with noble gases that light up the bulb, making them emit much more light in a more compact design. This feature makes them a popular option for pool lights, but their one drawback is the significant expense.
3. LED lights are the most highly sought for bulbs for pool lighting because of their longevity and energy efficiency. They use up less energy but provide a brighter light, so you enjoy a well-lit pool while being environmental-friendly. They cost less in the long run too. Further, they can produce not only white but colored lights, which is often the most loved feature.

LED vs. Fibre Optic Lights

The two types of lights are in high demand for pool lights, but which ones should you choose? They differ in maintenance difficulty, expense, brightness, and longevity.

1. Maintenance

LED lights are harder to replace. Often, if one bulb needs replacing, the entire unit will need replacing. Fibre Optic lights are much more comfortable and convenient to change and maintain. They are placed outside the pool, so it is easily accessible.

2. Cost

Fiber optic costs way more than Led lights upfront in the first installation and even in times of replacement. Led light bulbs may require changing once in a while, but the fiber optic lights make use of not only lamps but electric motors and fans that need maintenance and replacing adding to the total expenditure.

3. Brightness

The Fibre optic lights are more of a look enhancement of the pool with flattering lights that highlight waterfalls or perimeters. The Led lights, on the other hand, are bright and add to the improving visibility factor to make the pool safe to swim in at night.

4. Longevity

The average life of LED lights is about 7 to 15 years, almost double the life of fiber optic lights, which lasts only 3 to 5 years. This is attributed to the sturdy material used in LED lights, while fiber optic lights are made of delicate strands.

So, an overall better choice would be LED lights, which only fall behind Optic Fibre lights in the ease of maintenance category. It, too, can be remedied if you buy LED lights that have changeable light bulbs, so the entire unit is not compromised for one or two lamps.

Characteristics to consider while selecting appropriate pool lights

1. Types of Fixtures

• Flush-Mounted Underwater lights

These lights are installed in the interior walls of the pool and are mainly seen in in-ground pools. It is because they take up a lot of space for their larger than typical bulb housings.

• Surface-Mounted Underwater Lights

If your pool did not initially make space for in-wall fixtures of lights, this is a viable option. They give the look of flush-mounted fixtures but are much cheaper. They, however, face the risk of being damaged as they stick out of the surface.

• Floating Lights

As the name suggests, they seem like they are floating on the surface of the pool water. They make for great décor and add to the beauty of the pool settings. They are cheap and feasible for pools which don't have lights installed. They also come with color variations that can be programmed easily.

• Magnetic Lights

Designed for above ground pools, these lights are easy to install. They stick to the metallic siding, which can be installed on the interior or exterior of the walls, depending upon the ambiance and convenience.

2. Installation

The installation of pool lights can be tremendous work, which not everyone may be able to pull-off. So, to choose the perfect light for your pool, their installation may play a significant role. Even after installation, the installation type will decide the convenience of maintenance and replacement of bulbs, cleaning, etc.

Many people favor installing LED lights because of their advantages of longer life, bright light, color variations, and easy fitting to most types of pools.

Led lights that have a universal bracket are straightforward to install as they do not require drilling of holes in the walls for the bulbs to be screwed in. Connecting the cables is the next step, which can go one of two ways. Either, you can strip the ends off the old wire and join it to the new terminals. The alternative is to join the old cable ends to the new cable ends and tape them up.

3. Type of Pool

One needs to consider the type and size of people to reach the right decision about the kind of pool lights that will be apt.

The size of the pool helps you determine the area you wish to illuminate. This will narrow down your options. For lights that need to be installed, you need to see how much space will be taken up in housing, how much of the pool will be illuminated, and whether your pool size favors it. For floating lights, small-sized pools may not be suitable. If you may insist on it, you will be required to choose compact lights, which will take up minimal space and yet light up the pool according to your expectations.

The type of pool you have will heavily influence the lights you should get. For above-ground pools, floating lights and magnetic lights are easy to install and have a more appealing look to it. Flush-mount lights are not a viable option for such pools.

For in-ground pools, magnetic lights no longer remain an option, but flush-mount lights and other installations become possible.

4. Brightness

One of the main reasons that LED are in the good books of those wishing to install lights in their pools is their brightness. In contrast to other pool lights, LED lights are incredibly bright, so fewer bulbs can help reach the desired level of illumination.

They take up less energy than incandescent bulbs but produce almost the same, if not exactly alike, number of lumens. By only making use of 14-20 watts of power, about 1600 lumens of bright light can be produced by LED lights. Any other bulb will produce the same amount of lumens only by using 100 or so watts.

Common notion says that larger the bulb, brighter the light. This may have been true for past times, but technological advancements have made LED lights produce more brilliant light with smaller housings.

5. ➢ Color scheme

The way pool lights make an ordinary swimming pool attractive and appealing is one of the main reasons they are so popular. Pool lights do so through several features, one of which is the play of colors and how they make the water glitter with beauty. LED lights were created to add to the array of colors beyond yellow light.

While some pool lights provide the basics- red, blue, and green- others provide you with a much wider choice of colors- orange, purple, pink, and light blue. Others go the extra mile to provide you with changing lights that make your pool come live with light shows. These are customizable with what colors are on and what patterns they make and even have room for more creativity.

Customizable brightness and how the beam throws and illuminates the pool gives the pool an extra nudge with an automatic colorful play of lights.

6. Lifespan of Lights

A well lit swimming pool is an investment towards elegance and luxury. They may cost a fortune because of installation and maintenance, and so you must look into how long the lights last and when they will need to be renewed. Some may need frequent changing, like the old fashioned incandescent bulbs. But as technology has advanced, longer-lasting bulbs have entered the markets for convenience and economic benefits of the consumer.

Average LED bulbs can last from 20,000 to 60,000 hours. This is superior to the lifespan of 6000-hour life of optic fiber lights and mere 5000-hour life of incandescent lamps. The superseding lifespan of LED lights is attributed to the sturdy material of the housing, lack of filaments to emit light and innovative engineering and design.

When they require changing, they may take a lot of time and effort, but they outlive other bulbs, so an LED replacement is roughly equivalent to 6 incandescent and five fiber-optic replacements.

7. Cord Length and Face Ring

Several pool lights have attached power cords, which vary in lengths. They may be 15 inches long or even 150 inches long, but the most common range of power cords is 50 inches, 100 inches, and 150 inches. When you purchase a pool light, it must have a suitable length of the power cord to ensure that it reaches your power source.

When it comes to face rings, pool lights have two kinds: plastic and stainless steel. The stainless-steel face rings are a better choice because of their robust nature as compared to the plastic ones.

8. Additional Features

LED lights are different from the other types of lights that the E-markets have to offer to light up your swimming pools.

1. They go beyond the yellow and white light to provide other colored hues. These may range from the basics of red, blue, and green to different colors like pink, purple, or orange. While not everyone may prefer them, they add an extra appeal to the pool for parties.
2. They also come with the feature of dimming and increasing the brightness of the lights. Adjustable brightness can help set the tone for different moods and situations. When the sun is just setting, even mild brightness can work, but as the sky darkens, you can switch to brighter lighting.
3. LED lights ensure the safety of using pools at night in a proper way because of its high illumination capacity.

9. Control Settings

Pool lights, like all other electrical appliances, have switches and other controls that can help switch between color modes, control brightness levels, or even change the lights' effects for a full-blown light show.

The latest LED lights even come with features of remote control that facilitate control over these settings.

Multiple LED lights can be controlled simultaneously with a single switch. It is possible by connecting them to a standard junction box. Thus it will result in hassle-free control over the settings of your pool lights.

New pool lights come with automatic settings switch as well. When you are buying the pool lights you want, make sure that they come with easy to understand and operate control settings.

10. Energy Efficiency

The goal of buying great electrical appliances is maximum efficiency and brightness with minimum energy consumption. This is with regard to the environment and the pocket. Energy efficiency is an important characteristic that you should look for in the pool lights you plan to purchase.

When talking about energy efficiency, we bring into considerations, not just watts, but lumens. The higher the lumens against fewer watts, the more efficient bulb is used in the light. As discussed before, LED lights remain unbeatable in this arena.

However, by just focusing on watts and lumens, we forget to take into account the effect of colored light on the pool's illumination. This is because different brightness is required for pools with darker interiors. Even the angle of the lights affects the illumination.

So, to decide on lights that illuminate your pool in your desired manner, you need to look into all the factors like watts, lumens, pool-interior, and angles of lights. This will ensure that the pool lighting will not be compromised for energy efficiency or vice versa.

11. ➢ Durability

LED lights have become the epitome of strength and long life with minimum repairs. The time, money, and effort required to make a pool light up is considerable, and so it is expected to be sturdy and resistant to damage.

Fixtures like surface-mounted lights stick out, making them prone to damage and in need of constant repairing. Incandescent bulbs last for mere 5000 hours, which is not long and will need replacement every six months.

FAQs

Do I require to change the wiring while replacing the bulbs with LED lights?

No, you don't need to change the wiring while switching to LED lights. Check the wiring for any fault. If there is no fault, you can easily switch to an LED lighting type for better colors. Also, make sure that the fixtures are compatible with the LED lamps to ensure proper fitting.

Are pool lights water-resistant?

Yes, as the name suggests, most of the pool lights are water-resistant. But be aware, before selecting the model as you easily be duped and fall in the market bear trap and get faulty lights. Check properly and ensure that the product is water-resistant.

Are the pool lights safe to use?

Yes, pool lights are pretty safe to use. The bulbs are packed in the waterproof casing, which prevents the water from reaching the wires. Also, as the lights are submerged in the water, there is no heating issue. However, you should check all the fixtures and elements of the product before fitting them, as poor-quality products can lead to fatal accidents and injuries.

What type of light lamps should I choose for my pool for better brightness?

LED light lamps are the best alternative to choose to decorate your pool. Not only these handy products provide bright light but also have many cool variations of colors by which you can totally impress your guests.

Which light bulbs are more energy-efficient?

While choosing the light type for your pool, it is necessary to deem the power consumption of the product. Both halogen and incandescent light lamps consume more power than LED light bulbs. Even the LED lamps provide better brightness over the other two types and have many additional features.

Final Verdict

Owning a good pool in your home allows you to enjoy and relax your holidays and late evenings with your loved ones and friends. Dazzle up your area with amazing pool lights and allow your parities to be one of a kind.

Here, in this guide, we have provided you all the necessary information about all the characteristics of the pool lights. Brainstorm all the elements and evaluate them with your requirements and choose the best product which caters to your needs.