What Happens When The Best Lights Are All Outside

With the equinox having just passed, the days are now longer than the nights and the amount of time any outdoor lights will be switched on for will be getting shorter and shorter until the end of June.

Of course, having lovely long summer evenings is one of the joys of our northerly latitude, but it is not the only one. The northern lights, or aurora borealis to give its proper name, are a phenomenon that can be seen frequently in the darker months from Scotland and the far north of England, but in recent times they have been visible further south.

This has just happened for the second time in little over a month, with people able to view the lights outdoors as far south as Cornwall. Suffice to say, if there is a display going on above your home or establishment, you might want to turn off the outside lights briefly to aid the view.

However, while big aurora displays are common around the equinoxes, the sky will be too light for them by mid-May, due to the long twilight after a late sunset. However, this twilight itself will make for a great ambience, one that can be enhanced by retro outdoor lighting.

There will be plenty of other fine things to see in the sky that folk can witness this year. Apart from various full moons, those light summer nights may bring sparkling noctilucent clouds, and of course as autumn kicks in the aurora will be visible again, perhaps with more big displays around the autumn equinox.

While these phenomena can bring people outdoors on many a night, it is having some attractive and stylish lighting consistently available back here on earth that will help provide a pleasant, enjoyable setting outdoors. Not only will it make light evenings nicer; when to gets really dark it will help people get around as well as creating a sense of welcome amid forbidding darkness.  

Nature may provide some wonderful luminous displays, but with the right lighting down here you can put on a good show of your own.