Skip Basic Outdoor Lights — Brighten Your Retaining Wall With An Amazon Alternative

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If you've invested in attractive stonework and thoughtfully chosen your plants, then retaining walls can look fantastic during the day and can even boost your property's curb appeal. After dark, however, all that lovely visual interest you worked so hard to install temporarily disappears. While you can install traditional landscape lighting like spotlights, they tend to be glaring uplights, placed at the base of particularly attractive plants or along walkways. Frankly, this does very little to illuminate and soften the stonework of a retaining wall in particular. There are, however, discrete lighting options that will enhance the look of your retaining wall and the wider landscape while also making your outdoor area more inviting in the evening.

VOLISUN's LED retaining wall lights are a good solution. These are low-profile hardscaping lights that fit conveniently between your retaining wall caps. Each 7-inch light produces 330 lumens with a 95-degree downward beam, and the cuttable stainless steel mounting plate lets you adapt the fixtures to different capstone depths. Most importantly, for exterior use, they have an IP65 weather resistance rating and can also be used around steps, patios, and fire pits. 

These do, however, need a low-voltage transformer and landscape lighting cable to work. And finally, you will need to choose your positioning carefully to get a soft wash of welcoming light across your retaining wall to achieve the outdoor lighting trend of soft, wildlife-friendly low light.

To plan your installation, measure the retaining wall and use painter's tape to mark out where you think you want the fixtures. You don't need a capstone beneath every light. In fact because each fixture produces 330 lumens, placing them too close together could create unattractive harsh pools of light. Temporarily secure the lights in place and test them after dark, paying attention to how the 95 degree beam falls across the stonework. You want the light to illuminate the wall and maybe the pathway, directed downwards rather than outwards into people's eyes, particularly when used near steps or as outdoor walkway lighting, providing safety and ambiance.

Proper installation is essential for safety and performance. These lights can't simply be plugged into an ordinary outdoor outlet. They need a suitable landscape lighting transformer that converts household electricity into the low voltage that the fixtures require. You'll need to work out the total wattage before you buy the lighting transformer and make sure you include the wattage of any other lighting that you plan to run from the same transformer. For example if you opt for the 12-pack of VOLISUN lights, they draw 36 watts together. Generally speaking, even if you think you won't want to install any more lights, it's a good idea to give yourself some room and keep the total load to no more than 80% of the transformer's rated capacity. In this instance with your 12-pack of VOLISUN lights, you'd want a 50-watt transformer, which could provide 40 watts of usable capacity. If, however, you are planning on, or think you might, expand the system in the future, you may want to size up.

You aren't limited to installing a uniform row of these lights under your retaining wall caps. You could choose just to highlight one or two particularly attractive sections or to highlight areas around steps and pathways, then install others around a fire pit or seating area. On a more modern retaining wall with neat uniform blocks, however, evenly spaced lighting can give you a cleaner, more consistent contemporary finish. If your garden is staggered or terraced, illuminating the different levels can make the whole space look more interesting after dark.

You can use these fixtures anywhere you've got an appropriate overhanging ledge, like beneath the caps of raised stone planters, around built-in patio seating, or running alongside steps. If you're mixing and matching your outdoor light fixtures, whether that's combining the VOLISUN lights with pathway lighting or other landscape lighting, try to stick to a similar color temperature. Otherwise you end up with an odd mishmash of warm yellow and stark white. That's off-putting rather than welcoming and attractive. If you don't have removable capstones then you could try outdoor-rated LED strip lighting to elevate your backyard, like these color-changing waterproof LED strip lights from DayBetter. You can run strips just underneath a wall cap to create a continuous line of light instead of individual pools of illumination. Solar wall top lights are another alternative if you'd rather avoid running cables, although you will need somewhere that receives enough sunlight to keep them charged. If your primary concern is safety, then dedicated recessed step lights might be a better choice.