Wildlife Friendly Lighting
Warm and amber output, shielded optics, minimal spill — the fittings we would specify next to a hedge, a pond or a boundary.
The joint guidance from the Institution of Lighting Professionals and the Bat Conservation Trust (GN 08/23) asks for 2700K or lower with no UV, no light output above 90° and no upward tilt, part-night operation rather than dusk-to-dawn, and boundaries left genuinely dark — at or below 0.2 lux horizontal.
In a garden that translates to something quite simple: light the middle, not the edges. A hedge or treeline left unlit is a corridor animals can use; lit, it becomes a wall they won't cross. Amber at 2200K is better still near water, and markedly less attractive to flying insects than white.
None of this makes a garden look worse. Most of it makes it look better. The detail is here.
