How far apart should path lights be?

Six to eight feet apart, staggered from side to side rather than lined up in facing pairs. Closer than about five feet reads as a runway; further than about ten feet leaves dark gaps that defeat the purpose. Place a fixture at the start and the end of every curve so the shape of the path is legible from a distance, and set fixtures about 12 to 18 inches back from the paving edge so the pool of light lands on the walking surface rather than on the fixture itself.

What size transformer do I need for landscape lighting?

Add up the wattage of every fixture, then size the transformer at roughly 1.5 times that total. Twelve 3-watt LED fixtures draw 36 watts, so a 60-watt transformer is right and a 100-watt unit gives room to expand. Never load a magnetic transformer beyond about 80 percent of its rating continuously — it runs hot and shortens its own life. If you plan to add a second zone later, buy the bigger transformer now; upgrading later means pulling the unit off the wall and redoing the connections.

Do I need an electrician to install low-voltage landscape lighting?

In almost all cases no. The transformer plugs into an existing exterior GFCI outlet and everything downstream of it runs at 12 volts, which is not a shock hazard and is not treated as a wiring job under most residential codes. You need an electrician only if there is no exterior GFCI outlet to plug into and you need one installed, or if you want the transformer hardwired. Check your local code before starting, because burial depth and outlet requirements do vary.

How deep do you bury landscape lighting cable?

Six inches is the usual recommendation and satisfies most local requirements for low-voltage cable, though some jurisdictions accept less. The bigger consideration is where rather than how deep: run cable along a bed edge, a fence line or the back of a border where a spade, an edger or an aerator is unlikely to travel. Slitting a trench with a flat spade, tucking the cable in and closing the slit works well in turf and leaves almost no trace after a week.

Why are the lights at the end of my run dimmer?

Voltage drop. Current flowing through the cable loses voltage along the way, so the last fixture on a long thin run sees materially less than 12 volts and dims noticeably. The fixes are heavier cable — 12 gauge instead of 16 — or better wiring layout, running several shorter branches out from a central point rather than one long daisy chain. Most transformers also offer 13V, 14V and 15V taps so you can compensate on a long run. Aim for 10.8 to 12 volts measured at each fixture.

How to Install Path Lighting: Spacing, Cable

Written & researched by Elena Marsh Gardening & Landscaping Editor

Updated October 2026

Wide view of a person pushing a small path light into garden soil at dusk, warm glow

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The short answer: space path lights 6 to 8 feet apart, staggered, 12 to 18 inches back from the paving. Total the fixture wattage and buy a transformer rated about 1.5 times that. Use 12-gauge cable for anything over about 100 feet, wire in short branches from a central hub rather than one long chain, bury the cable 6 inches deep along a bed edge, and confirm 10.8 to 12 volts at every fixture before you backfill. A 12-fixture run is an afternoon.

Step 1: Lay It Out Before You Buy Anything

Put the fixtures on the ground before you put them in the ground. Buy or borrow the kit, set the fixtures along the path in daylight at your intended spacing, then come back after dark with an extension cord and the transformer plugged in temporarily. Twenty minutes of looking at the actual light on the actual path will change your layout more than any amount of planning on paper.

The layout rules worth knowing before that walk:

6 to 8 feet apart along a straight run, staggered left and right rather than in facing pairs. Facing pairs read as a landing strip.
12 to 18 inches back from the paving edge, so the light pool falls on the walking surface and the fixture itself is out of the path of an ankle or a mower.
One fixture at each end of a curve. A bend that goes dark at its apex is exactly where people step off the path.
Steps and level changes get their own light — a shielded step light or a fixture at the top and bottom. This is the safety part of the job and it should never be left to a solar stake.
Do not light the whole path. A walkway is legible with pools of light and dark between them. Continuous even illumination costs more and looks like a commercial property.

Count fixtures at this stage and measure the cable route with a tape or a measuring wheel, following the path the cable will actually take rather than a straight line. Those two numbers — total wattage and longest run — decide everything that follows.

Golden-hour view of a person pushing a small path light into garden soil at dusk, warm glow

Step 2: Size the Transformer

Total the wattage of every fixture on the system, then multiply by 1.5. That headroom does two jobs: it keeps a magnetic transformer off its thermal limit, and it leaves room to add fixtures in year two, which almost everybody does.

Fixture count	Typical LED draw	Total load	Transformer to buy
6 path lights	3W each	18W	45W
10 path lights	3W each	30W	60W
12 path + 4 spots	3W and 5W	56W	100W
20 path + 8 spots	3W and 5W	100W	150–200W, two zones
Legacy halogen, 10 fixtures	20W each	200W	300W

Two features are worth paying for. Multi-tap outputs (12V, 13V, 14V, 15V terminals) let you push extra voltage down a long run to compensate for drop, which is far cheaper than re-trenching with heavier cable. Multiple independent circuits let you split the yard into zones on separate schedules — front path on until midnight, back garden off at 10pm. Both cost a modest premium and both get used.

Mount the transformer at least 12 inches above grade on a wall or post, near the GFCI outlet it plugs into, and where you can reach the dial. A transformer buried behind a shrub is a transformer nobody ever adjusts.

Step 3: Cable Gauge and Voltage Drop

This is the part kits do not explain and the reason so many DIY systems have a bright first fixture and a dull last one. Current flowing through copper loses voltage along the way. LEDs tolerate a range, but below roughly 10.5 volts many drivers dim visibly or flicker, and cheaper fixtures simply stop.

The practical rule: multiply the watts on a run by the length of that run in feet, and read the result against the cable gauge.

Cable gauge	Approximate watt-feet before ~10% drop	Typical use
16 AWG	~1,200 watt-feet	Short LED runs under 50 ft; what most cheap kits include
14 AWG	~1,900 watt-feet	Medium runs, mixed path and spot
12 AWG	~3,000 watt-feet	The sensible default for a whole-yard LED system
10 AWG	~4,800 watt-feet	Long trunk lines, 150 ft and beyond

An example. Ten 3-watt LED path lights, the furthest 90 feet from the transformer. A rough working figure is watts multiplied by the distance to the midpoint of the load — call it 30 watts across an average distance of 55 feet, or about 1,650 watt-feet. That is beyond comfortable 16-gauge territory and comfortably inside 14-gauge, and 12-gauge would leave room to add fixtures later. Because LED fixtures draw so little, most residential systems are fine on 12-gauge for anything you are likely to build.

Buy direct-burial rated cable — it is jacketed for permanent contact with soil and moisture. Indoor lamp cord and standard speaker wire are not rated for it, will absorb water at any nick, and corrode from the inside.

Over-the-shoulder view of a person pushing a small path light into garden soil at dusk, warm glow

Step 4: Wire in Branches, Not One Long Chain

A daisy chain — transformer to fixture 1 to fixture 2 to fixture 12 — guarantees the last fixture gets the least voltage. Three better layouts:

The hub (or T) method. Run one heavy trunk cable to a central point in the lit area, then split into two or three shorter branches from there. Every fixture is within a short distance of a full-voltage feed. This is the standard professional approach and the easiest to expand.

The loop. Run the cable out to the far end and back to the transformer, connecting both ends to the same terminals. Current arrives at every fixture from two directions, which roughly halves the effective drop. It uses more cable but is very forgiving.

Split zones. If the transformer has two independent circuits, put the front yard on one and the back on the other. Half the load per circuit, half the drop, and separate schedules as a bonus.

Whatever the layout, keep each branch under about 100 feet where you can. Long branches are where problems live.

Step 5: The Install, Step by Step

Lay the cable on the surface first and connect everything temporarily. Do not bury anything until the whole system has run for a full night.
Make the connections properly. Waterproof gel-filled or silicone-filled connectors are the difference between a system that works for a decade and one that fails in year two. Twist-on wire nuts and electrical tape are the single most common failure point in DIY landscape lighting — they wick water and corrode. Pierce-point quick connectors are fine for temporary layout but should be replaced with sealed connectors before burial.
Test at the far fixture with a multimeter. Set it to DC volts and probe the fixture leads with the system on. You want 10.8 to 12 volts. Below 10.5, move up a tap on the transformer or rework the branch. Above 12.5 at the fixture will shorten LED driver life.
Aim and check at night before burial. Look at the path from the house, from the sidewalk and from a neighbor's angle. Fix glare now; it is much harder to care about after the cable is in the ground.
Bury the cable 6 inches deep. A flat spade slit works in turf: push in, lever forward, drop the cable in, step the slit closed. In beds, a trowel trench under the mulch layer is enough. Run cable along bed edges and fence lines, not across open lawn where an aerator or edger will find it.
Photograph the cable route before you close it up, with the house in frame for reference. Future you, digging a planting hole, will be grateful.
Set the timer. Dusk to 11pm or midnight covers the hours anyone uses the yard and roughly halves run time versus dusk to dawn.

Close-up detail of the material being worked in a garden lighting project, in warm late-afternoon light

The Mistakes That Cause Callbacks

Mistake	What happens	Fix
Wire nuts instead of sealed connectors	Corrosion, intermittent fixtures within two years	Gel-filled waterproof connectors throughout
Transformer loaded to 100 percent	Runs hot, fails early, no room to expand	Size at 1.5x total fixture wattage
One long daisy chain	Progressively dimmer fixtures	Hub or loop layout; heavier gauge
Fixtures too close together	Runway effect, over-lit path	6 to 8 ft, staggered
Fixtures set at the paving edge	Mower and ankle damage; light on the fixture, not the path	Set back 12 to 18 inches
Cable buried across open lawn	Cut by edger, aerator or fork	Route along bed edges; photograph the run
Cool white lamps	Yard looks institutional, foliage goes gray	2700K to 3000K — see the color guide
Stakes pushed into rocky soil	Bent stakes, leaning fixtures by spring	Pre-drill the hole with a rebar pin or a bulb auger

When Solar Makes More Sense

Everything above assumes a wired 12V system, which is the right answer where light needs to be reliable — steps, entries, anywhere a failed fixture becomes a trip hazard. If the run is decorative, the ground is difficult, or you rent, solar stakes remove the entire install and cost nothing to run. The trade is real: less output, shorter winter runtime, and a battery that fades after a couple of seasons. The straight comparison is in solar vs low-voltage lighting.

Plenty of yards end up mixed — solar marking the bed edges, wired fixtures on the front walk and the steps. If you are choosing wired hardware, the field ranked in best low-voltage landscape lights weighs housing material, warranty and connector quality heavily, because those are the three things owners come back to complain about years later. For the solar side of a mixed yard, best solar landscape lights filters for the traits that survive a second winter.

Keeping It Working

Wired systems are low-maintenance but not no-maintenance. Twice a year, walk the run and straighten anything that has been nudged, wipe the lenses — a film of dust and pollen costs a surprising amount of output — and check that mulch or growing plants have not swallowed a fixture. Re-aim spotlights in late fall when leaves drop and again in spring when they return, because the target shape changes completely.

If a single fixture goes dark, it is nearly always the connector or the lamp, not the cable. If a whole branch goes dark, check the transformer terminal and the GFCI outlet first. And if everything dims gradually over a season, measure voltage at the far fixture again; something has usually been added to the run since the last time anyone did the math.

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How to Install Path Lighting (Spacing, Cable and the Voltage Math)