Solar lighting is a great choice for outdoor spaces where you want to create a welcoming ambiance without having to deal with cords or electricity. These lights use solar panels to generate energy during the day, which stores in batteries for later use. They can work anywhere in the world, but their performance varies depending on your location and weather conditions. You can maximize their effectiveness by placing them where they get 6-8 hours of direct sunlight a day and making sure the solar panel isn’t shaded by trees or walls.

If you’re looking to highlight a garden or specific area in your yard and don’t want to fill the space with too many lights, a spotlight-style solar light can be a good option. These lights produce a narrow beam that can be angled to spotlight specific areas, such as your backyard, and they’re often designed with stakes so you can plant them in the ground or screws for mounting on the wall. Some have the option to pivot up to 120 degrees, which is helpful if you need to point them in a different direction.

Solar path lights illuminate walkways and driveways with a soft, ambient glow and add a decorative accent to your landscaping. These lights have multiple brightness settings, including a low mode that lasts up to 12 hours and a high mode that’s bright enough for reading. The lights’ simple design is easy to install, with stakes that go into the ground or screws for mounting on the wall, and it’s also possible to connect them together to make a longer string.

These lantern-style solar lights have a decorative crackled glass finish that adds to the ambiance of your outdoor spaces and are available in several colors. They’re easy to set up and don’t require any installation, but they do come with a wall mounting option for those who prefer it that requires some basic household tools like a hammer. The battery-powered lights turn on automatically at dusk and are weather resistant, but if you’re in an especially windy or rainy climate, it might be worth it to keep them inside during extreme weather events.

In addition to evaluating their overall appearance and ease of use, we put our top picks through durability testing. This involved spraying them with water to simulate rain and freezing them for an hour to test how they would handle cold weather. During this process, the shatterproof bulbs and solar panels remained intact, which is a testament to their ruggedness. Our team even dropped golf balls from heights of up to four feet to see how they would hold up, and they weren’t damaged at all. In addition, we tested the light’s motion sensors, which register movement and turn on the lights only when needed, to see how they would work in real-life situations. We also consulted our buyer’s guides to compare features and read reviews to determine what other buyers had experienced with the product.