6 Pool Lighting Ideas to Brighten Up Your Outdoor Space

Swimming pools may conjure images of fun in the sun, but they aren’t exclusively used during the daytime. Many pool owners also enjoy taking nighttime swims, throwing late-night pool parties, or treating the pool area as an aesthetic outdoor space. Pool lighting ideas expands your Simple Set Pools enjoyment opportunities, even after the sun goes down.

Adding poolside lighting grants greater pool area visibility, a must-have for homes with kids, pets, or accident-prone individuals. Additionally, the right lights around a pool make a space more inviting, more festive, and can show off your favorite home features at night. These pool lighting ideas can help you transform your poolside into a more practical and aesthetically pleasing space.

1. Underwater Lights

Outside pool lights can go on or around the water, as well as in the water. Installing LED lights below the pool surface helps illuminate the hue of the liner, giving water a soft blue glow. Nighttime swimmers will also likely feel more comfortable diving underwater when they can see where they’re going.

Of course, given the location of these outside pool lights, they are best installed during new pool construction or while renovating an existing one.

2. String Lights

String lights are simple, fast to set up, and a type of pool deck lighting that adds some easygoing charm to an outdoor area. With bulbs ranging in size from small twinkle lights to large outdoor Edison light bulbs, there are sure to be string lights to suit many tastes.

Whether strung around the perimeter of the pool or draped along a nearby fence, string lights look nice pretty much wherever you hang them—but that doesn’t mean they can go anywhere. As nice as it looks to string lights over your pool, it can be dangerous, or even lethal, if live string lights fall into a pool with a swimmer. Hang string lights thoughtfully and securely near a pool to avoid any risk of them ending up in the water.

3. Colorful Floating Lights

Add some flair to your pool with a convenient underwater light that doesn’t need to be hang up or install at all. This floating pool light available at The Home Depot is solar-power and charges throughout the day. By night, it rotates through five different LED colors or can be set to a steady white. Even if you forget to turn the light off, these outside pool lights have automatically shut off after 2 or 5 hours—depending on whether it’s in static or color-change mode.

4. In-Ground Lights

Create long, dramatic shadows with upward-facing lights mounted directly in the deck or ground. As amazing as it looks, there are a few things to consider before installing in-ground lights around a pool. Unless you’re a skill electrician, this one is best leave to the professionals. Who can connect outside pool lights to power and protect them from inevitable water and moisture exposure.

5. Inflatable Moon Lights

Bring moonlight to the pool even on moonless nights. Each globe in this four-pack of inflatable outside pool lights available at Amazon. It is print to look like the moon and offers cool or warm light, or they can cycle between the two. Hang these 14-inch moons from a pergola or nearby trees, or let them float freely on the water—weighted bases keep them from turning over. Best of all, they’re solar-powered and will glow for up to 8 hours at night on a full charge.

6. Motion Sensor Lights

Outdoor pool lighting ideas don’t always have to be full of whimsy or purely decorative. On the contrary, these highly rated waterproof solar motion-sensor lights available at Amazon. It can add safety to a pool area within 26 feet. As well as extra security to a home, with no frills. The solar lights, which come in bundles of two or four, have three settings. They turn on and off when motion is detect, stay on all night. It can set to smart mode, which keeps the lights on all night. They shine brighter when sensors detect movement.