Outdoor lighting in most Australian backyards is a choice between a security floodlight and nothing. One is useful and ugly; the other leaves the yard black from eight o'clock. This sits in between — six pendants on cords under a solar cap, hanging at 65 cm, that come on by themselves at dusk and cycle slowly through colours while they turn in the breeze. It is not lighting you work by. It is the garden decoration that gives the dark end of the yard something to look at.

Why It Stands Out

• It moves — six pendants on separate cords turn independently in the lightest air, so the colour shifts position as well as hue. Most hanging lights do one fixed thing; this never looks the same twice.
• Silent — no tubes and no striker. You get the look of something hanging in the tree without the sound that starts arguments with the neighbours at two in the morning.
• Colours change on their own — the LEDs cycle slowly rather than flashing, so it reads as a shifting glow rather than a party light.
• Nothing to plug in — the panel is built into the top cap, which makes this a hanging solar light you can put in a tree at the back of the yard where no cable reaches.
• It switches itself on — the sensor reads dusk and starts it, then shuts it off at dawn. You hang it once and that is the last decision you make about it.
• Eight hours and more a night — on a good charge it is still going when you come in.
• 65 cm of drop — long enough to read properly from a distance, short enough to hang under a verandah without anyone walking into it.

How It Works

1. The cap is the solar panel — it faces straight up and charges the Ni-MH cell inside through the day.
2. A sensor reads the falling light — as dusk comes the panel stops generating, the sensor registers it, and the pendants light.
3. Each pendant has its own LED — they cycle through colours independently, which is why the whole piece never settles on one shade.
4. The cords let them turn — hung separately from the cap, each pendant moves on its own in the breeze.

Where to Hang It

• From a tree branch over the garden — the position it was made for. Out in the open it catches every bit of air and the colour moves through the foliage.
• Under a pergola or verandah beam — where patio lights do their real work, over the table or at the corner of the entertaining area.
• At the end of the yard — as backyard lights go, the trick is to put something at the far edge so the garden has depth after dark instead of ending at the lawn.
• Off a shepherd hook in a garden bed — where there is no branch, a hook puts it right among the planting.
• From a balcony rail or an awning bracket — no power point needed, which is the whole problem on an apartment balcony.
• Beside a window you look out of — the kitchen sink, the lounge room. This is hanging decor as much as it is lighting, and it works best where someone actually sees it.
• Over a pond or a water feature — the colour picks up twice, once in the air and once off the water.

How to Hang It

1. Pick the spot for the cap, not the pendants — the top has to see open sky through the middle of the day. Everything else follows.
2. Separate the cords before you hang it — they arrive tangled from packing. Two minutes untwisting them is the difference between six pendants turning freely and a knot.
3. Hang it where there is air — clear of a wall or dense foliage, so a light breeze actually moves it rather than pressing it against something.
4. Give it clearance underneath — 65 cm of drop plus the branch height, so nobody walks into it in the dark.
5. Charge it a full day before the first night — the first evening on a part charge tells you nothing.
Tip: hang it where it has something dark behind it — a hedge, a paling fence, the shadow under a tree. Against a pale rendered wall the colour washes out and you lose half the effect. The same piece in front of greenery reads twice as strongly.

NB: this is a decorative light rather than a working one — it marks a spot and gives the garden something to look at, but it will not light a path or a set of steps. Its performance comes down to two things: the cap needs real sun through the middle of the day, facing north, which is the sun-facing side in Australia; and the pendants need room to move. A spot that gets both will run all evening and never look static. Tucked under dense cover on a still corner, it will do neither well.

Care and Maintenance

• Wipe the cap every few weeks. It faces straight up, so it collects everything — dust, pollen, bird mess — and that is the first thing to cut the run time.
• Untangle the cords when they twist. Months of wind in one direction winds them together; a minute separating them restores the movement.
• Bring it in through a storm. It is light and it hangs on a cord, so a real blow will throw it about.
• Switch it off if it goes into storage. Left on in a dark shed the cell runs flat and stays flat, which is harder on a battery than nightly use.

Specifications

What's Included

• 1 × Hanging solar light with 6 colour-changing pendants