The patio is set up. The evening is warm. And then the moths find your outdoor lights, and suddenly you’re eating dinner with a several uninvited guests.

If you’ve been thinking about outdoor lighting for your backyard, patio, or pool area in greater Charleston, it’s reasonable to wonder whether new lights will attract more bugs to your yard. The short answer is that it depends entirely on which lights you choose and where they go. When you work with an outdoor lighting contractor who gets those two things right, you can enjoy your evenings outside without well, drawing the moth to the flame.

Why bugs are drawn to (some) Charleston Outdoor Lighting

It comes down to two big factors: heat and wavelength. And it helps to know how they work together, because it influences which outdoor lights to install.

Traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs run hot, and that warmth draws insects in on its own. But temperature is only part of the equation. Those bulbs also tend to emit light in the blue-white part of the spectrum, which happens to be the range that bugs see best. So when you notice a cloud of moths circling an old porch light on a summer night, that’s both factors working at once.

But not all LED bulbs are the same, as we’ll explain in the section to follow.

Warm LEDs are the ones you want for lighting minus the bugs

If your sole goal were to attract bugs, you’d use cool-toned LEDs. They’re more blue-white in nature, and they emit light in the wavelength range that insects love so much. While not quite as bad as incandescent bulbs (thanks to the lower heat), cool-toned LEDs can still attract bugs.

Warm LED bulbs are a better choice here. These are the ones that give off that amber, almost golden glow. They’re less attractive to bugs because they neither emit light in an attractive wavelength range nor do they heat up to a degree that bugs find irresistible.

This is one of the nice things about working with a dedicated Charleston outdoor lighting company. Experts can easily identify the specific bulbs and fixtures that work best to limit the attractiveness to bugs. There are tons of different types of light bulbs on the market, and the research process can be overwhelming. But, it’s not something you have to tackle on your own.

At Carolina Landscape Lighting, we’ve been designing outdoor lighting systems in the Charleston area since 2012, so we’ve dealt with our fair share of ambitious, light-hungry Lowcountry bugs. And that means when we design a system, warm LEDs are already part of the conversation. Because we live here too, and we know what Charleston evenings are like.

Charleston patio lighting and pool lighting without the swarm

Bulb selection is important, but it’s not the whole story. The other piece to consider is placement. And this is where it gets interesting.

For Charleston pool and patio lighting, we’ll often position fixtures along the perimeter of a seating area. This is a subtle difference, to be sure, but what it does is pull bugs to the edges of the space rather than right where people are sitting and eating. This means you can still enjoy plenty of warm, ambient light, but the few bugs that do make it over there don’t get in your way.

This is why our team likes to know how you plan to use the area before installing outdoor lighting. If you host dinners outside most weekends, or your family swims in the evenings, we use that information to determine where fixtures ought to go and what kind of bulbs need to be in them.

Take a look at our gallery, and you can see how this kind of design comes together in real Charleston and Mount Pleasant homes.

Enjoy your evenings outside

Charleston summers are long, and the evenings are worth savoring. With the right LEDs and some thought put into placement, you can have beautiful lighting and far fewer bugs to deal with.

Ready to get started? Reach out today.
Contact us online

Charleston: 843-817-9797

charleston@carolina-light.com