Bright ideas: The best battery and solar-powered lights

Many of us will remember as children reading by torchlight under the bedclothes and, later, by candlelight (but not under the bedclothes!) during the power cuts of the 1970s.

But today, usable lighting that doesn’t need to be plugged into the mains is widely available.

This is thanks to a combination of batteries that last almost indefinitely and are also often rechargeable along with, more significantly, LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs that use a tiny fraction of the power of old-style tungsten bulbs without producing any appreciable heat.

Go into any DIY shop and the range of these cheap, almost entirely Chinese, battery lights for every application – from under-unit kitchen strips and bedroom reading lamps to security lighting and garden illumination – is quite extraordinary.

Not being able to afford the expense and disruption of having a new mains socket fitted is no longer a barrier to installing lighting.

Before last Christmas, I installed a very inexpensive battery light of this kind I’d bought from Amazon for a walk-in wardrobe and an under stairs cupboard, neither of which had mains wiring.

The lights both still work and haven’t needed new batteries more than a year on, even though the proximity detector in one requires a bit of hand-waving to come on.

Wiring the garden would have cost hundreds, so I bought a four-pack of solar-powered garden lights.

The brand I bought isn’t worth mentioning as it no longer exists – these products, many with Chinese names, come and go – but there are dozens of similar lights.

A quality level higher than cheap-as-chips plastic LED lights, however, comes from British brand Pooky, whose £199 antique brass-finished Wisteria rechargeable table lamp is beautiful and dimmable.

It gives 10 hours of battery life per eight-hour charge, so isn’t one to leave on permanently, but to finish reading a book in, say, the conservatory, as the autumn darkness descends, it’s excellent.

Our garden has a dangerous step that is hard to see in the evening and I worried from the moment we moved in that someone would have an accident tripping over it.

Wiring the garden would have cost hundreds, so I bought a four-pack of solar-powered garden lights from Must Have Ideas, a wonderful website based in Kent. At £24.99, but almost always with £10 off, its Star Bright Swivel Lights have been a huge hit – and no accidents to date.

Even on an overcast summer’s day they charge up enough to shine all evening. Ideal if you want to savour the last of the light for outdoor drinks before the clocks go back.

Need under-kitchen-unit lamps but don’t have the wiring for them? At £26.99 for two panels, Amazon’s WEAOSJZ lights do the job – even if the name is unpronounceable.

Another easy solution to lighting up a spot without mains is the Feallive Wall Light LED Lamp, also from Amazon – and another bargain at £19.99. I’ve used it for reading in bed and it was brilliant.