If you have been to The Solar Lights Site, you likely know quite a bit about solar lighting.  A recent post there inspired me to write this article about solar marker lights. If you are not familiar with solar lighting, that’s okay.  You can still benefit from this article.

So what makes these lights so unique?  Like other styles, they use solar panels to gather the sun’s light and convert it to energy.  They use on-board batteries to store that charge, and LED bulbs to turn that energy back into light.  Unlike other types of lights, they need to be smaller and function under much harsher circumstances.

Solar marker lights can be surface mounted or recessed.  That gives them a wide range of application possibilities.  Surface mounted lights can be mounted anywhere that you have something to mount them to:  concrete, steps, walkway, posts, walls, etc.  Recessed lights are a little more difficult to install, as you need to create a hole of some kind to recess them.  They really do look great if you can work them in though.

One of the more popular ways to use these marker lights is probably as driveway lights.  Solar driveway lights are really useful if you have a home with a dark driveway.  Not so much for seeing the driveway when you are pulling into it, but more so once you have parked and are getting out of your car, gathering the kids, walking to the front door, etc.  Just having that glow really helps your ability to see.  It is also really comforting.

Another way that marker lights are being used more and more is in public safety.  There are companies out there right now that have designed marker lights to be used as solar crosswalk lights.  These lights are usually spaced a few feet apart on both sides of a public crosswalk.  When someone is given a signal to cross the street, these lights blink, alerting motorists that a pedestrian is crossing.


Hopefully you now know a little bit more about solar marker lights.  If you use your imagination, you can surely find new and creative uses for them.