A summer evening has one flaw: it ends. When dusk falls after nine, the patio turns into a dark stage with no actors, and the balcony into a concrete niche nobody steps out onto any more. Yet it is precisely after dark, when the heat lets go, that sitting outside is at its loveliest. The difference between a terrace you flee back indoors from and one where conversations run past midnight usually comes down to two or three points of warm light. In this post we show how to build patio and balcony lighting out of ready-made blocks – string lights, rechargeable lamps, glowing spheres and solar lanterns – with no renovation or chiselling, and quite often without a socket.
Michał Smykowski