The best outdoor flood lights

Rethinking your garden lighting? Aside from making your back garden feel like the set of Friday Night Lights, there’s a lot the best outdoor flood lights can do: deter would-be criminals, gently startle foxes and cats looking to have at your bins, and help you find your way around the garden or front yard on dark evenings. But which one is right for your property? 

•  Top up your safeguarding efforts with the latest in home security technology 
•  Adorn the rest of your garden with our pick of the best garden lighting 
•  Ace that entrance with the best doormats for front and back doors, inside and out 

The best flood light for you depends heavily on what your priority is, so we’ve listed the power consumption, the lumens, and whether or not each model has a motion sensor, to help you decide – there’s a surprising amount of variety out there.

If you’re looking to save some money on your utilities, something like the super-energy-efficient Steinel XLED Home 1 Floodlight, which only uses 14.8W of power, should serve you well. However, the best bet all round looks to be the Auraglow 50W LED PIR Sensor Security Light. The name might not be the catchiest, but reviewers say it’s much easier to set up than it is to say, and they loved the combination of power and customisation it offers. 

This super bright security light is said to give off the equivalent of 300W for just 50W of power consumption, so in energy terms, you get a lot of brightness for your buck. With 3,800 lumens, it’s the second brightest option on our list, and with a cited 50,000 hours of life and 85% saving when the should-I-have-switched utilities bill comes through, it’s a great all-round option. The adjustable PIR (that’s passive infrared) sensor range allows you to choose how sensitive the light is to nearby movement, or you can simply pop it on continuous mode for all-night brightness and peace of mind.

Consuming just 14.8W of power, this Steinel XLED floodlight is far and away the least demanding option on our list, and still manages to put out 150W of halogen light. Steinel’s own patented Active Thermo Control system keeps the light from overheating from its efforts even when left on all night, but if you’d rather not have it going continuously, there are lots of options for tailoring. Hardware-wise, you can turn the lamp 180° and tilt it 120° to create the perfect angle on patios and pathways, and the time and twilight thresholds can be edited to exacting standards. 

Not merely a floodlight, and not just a video security system either: if you’re looking for the full package, this Ring Floodlight Cam might just be it. This setup combines the functionality of the Ring smart doorbell, which gives you a live feed from your front door, with two ultra-bright LED floodlights and a siren alarm, allowing you to see, hear and speak to welcome visitors from your device, and see off the unwanted ones when necessary. Using the Ring app, you can get instant alerts from the motion sensor, set up the lights, zoom in, or even sound the alarm remotely. 

This Lightaurora floodlight is the only option on our list that doesn’t come equipped with a motion sensor, but while that means it might not be the best as a security light, it’s our best of the bunch for feature lighting and spotlighting in the great outdoors. Want to give your pathway or porch more kerb appeal at night? Add more ambience to the garden when the party goes on into the wee small hours? Draw attention to your favourite trees and statuary? This RGB LED floodlight is the way to do it, with multiple colour settings and warmth options that make it that bit more welcoming than the average LED flood light.

Super sensitive, super bright and almost endlessly adjustable, this 500W floodlight is a great one for homeowners looking for absolute peace of mind when it comes to making sure their perimeter is protected. The sensor’s sensitivity is adjustable up to a range of 10m, so it’ll pick up on any skulkers before they get anywhere near your door, the light duration can be set anywhere from six seconds to eight minutes, and there are energy-saving options like 'moon' mode (which sees the sensor set only at night-time without you having to constantly go back and reset it) that make this great for those who like to tinker with their security settings at different times, for example when going away on holiday.

Another superbly adjustable option, this LightingEver light lets you adjust the PIR sensitivity, illumination time after motion detection, and light sensor sensitivity, so again, it’s a good option for those who want to up their security settings to outfox would-be intruders while on holiday. This 30W option isn’t quite as powerful as our previous pick, hence the slightly smaller price tag, but it is available in a choice of 10 or 50W too, should that be a deal-breaker. The long cited lifespan of 50,000 hours and IP65 water-resistant rating make it a low-maintenance option, and the ability to mount vertically or horizontally is a nice inclusion too. 

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