A solar garden lantern is powered by the light from the sun. You can use a solar powered lantern as a decoration in your garden or on the patio and walkways. These lights are great for people who care about saving energy and safer lighting techniques. Solar lanterns require no electrical wires and installation is fairly easy.

Each solar garden lantern has its own small solar collection panel. This panel collects sunlight during the day and converts it into electricity which is stored in a small rechargeable battery. If the lantern collects enough energy, it will turn on when it becomes dark and shine for as long as it has the stored energy to do so.

The next day the cycle will repeat itself again. It will recharge its batteries from the sun's light and store the energy until sunset. It will then use the stored electricity at night.

As you can imagine, you need to place a solar garden lantern where it will get direct sunlight for most part of the day. Placing it in a shadowy place will only result in very poor lighting performance. Keep in mind that solar lights are for decoration only and not for general lighting purposes because they are not very bright. They only provide soft lighting, kind of like big stationary fireflies.

A solar garden lantern will use rechargeable batteries to store the sun energy it absorbs during the day. At night these will power a light emitting diode or LED. They use very little energy but do not provide strong lighting.

You can use a solar garden lantern to provide soft lighting for the pathway up to your house or any other path at the back of your house. Another way to use an outdoor solar lantern is to focus the attention on a specific feature in your garden at night. You may, for example, use solar lanterns to create some light near a beautiful tree or special plant in your garden. Why not put a solar LED lantern close to the water feature or pond in your backyard? I have even heard of lights that are designed to resemble frogs.

A solar powered lantern may not provide tons of light, but it can add a sense of magic to any garden. Some solar lanterns are made to look like fairies and angels. This is a relatively inexpensive way to create small islands of light in your garden at night.