Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is one of the major religious festivals in India, and it usually falls between mid-October and mid-November per the lunar calendar. It symbolizes the victory of good over evil and light over darkness, so Diwali Lights have great significance. Our family recently hosted a party for the festival, so in this post, I'm sharing our ideas for our outside Diwali lighting design which truly made our home sparkle and delighted our guests!
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Outside Diwali Lighting Design
You will want to carefully plan your outside lighting design a few weeks before Diwali. Creative and beautiful lighting will set the tone and ambiance for your celebration. Our family's Diwali celebration was held in South Louisiana in November, which is a perfect time for an outdoor event. We made a considerable effort to come up a variety of Diwali lights ideas that would generously illuminate our backyard to accentuate our property and showcase the lighting for the party.
The design for the lighting that filled our backyard for Diwali included the following projects:
- Hanging long rows of LED string lights around the backyard illuminating the area.
- Wrapping white lights around the tree trunks to accentuate our tall trees.
- Creating a colorful lighted backdrop for the food display and tables. The multi-colored fabric strung with white lights was beautiful, and our guests loved them.
I have detailed the steps for how we created the above three lighting areas in the rest of this post, along with where you can purchase the lights and decor we used. I hope that sharing our Diwali lighting ideas will provide a jumpstart on how to create some festive outside lighting options for your home.
Diwali Lighting Ideas to Decorate Trees
Hanging LED String Lights
Our first Diwali lighting design project involved hanging LED string lights in our backyard. We thought the lights around our backyard perimeter was a great idea that would accentuate the property nicely. We hung twelve Feit Electric 48ft’ string lights all over the backyard. It took Akhil (My husband) a few failed attempts to figure out how to hang these long spans of lights. It is easier to hang for small spans, but longer spans require more effort.
He used a wire braided plastic rope stretched for sturdy, permanent installation between all the tie points. This wire rope was held by wall mount hooks, thimbles, rope clamps, and turnbuckles at both ends. String lights are supported by this wire rope and tied to it using zip ties or wire strings. Akhil used a pulley on one end with the rope passing over it to light the string. Our children would pull the string on his command as he tied each bulb to the wire rope. Then it just slid across the whole span.
You can search on Amazon for String light hanging kits for items needed for this hack. Once Akhil understood the concept, we bought parts from the local hardware stores. It took him four weekends to finish hanging all of the twelve strings of lights for our Diwali celebration.
Wrapping Lights Around Tree Trunks
Once Akhil was done hanging the string lights in our backyard, he moved to the next phase of our Diwali lights design project, which involved wrapping the tree trunks with lights. To cover the trunks of the more giant trees, he used 12 mesh/net lights of ‘GE StayBright 8ft x 6ft. He opted for mesh/net lights instead of traditional Christmas string lights for the trunks of the Pine trees and other tall trees since this type of lighting would nicely accentuate the tree trunks.
Akhil used regular LED Christmas lights to wrap the trunk and branches of our Sioux Crape Myrtle trees. These trees have more branches and thin trunks than tall pine trees; holiday lights were easy to wrap around these tree trunks. Overall, all the lights created a beautiful ambiance for our Diwali event and helped brighten the backyard’s dark areas.
Diwali Lighting Design for Food Tables
I envisioned a very special lighting design for the Diwali food display and buffet tables, so one of my favorite ideas was to create a colorful and spectacular backdrop that I hoped would delight our guests while they were eating. To create the backdrop, we had to re-organize the area and move our girl’s swing set to our neighbor’s backyard (with their permission). Once we cleared the site, we placed four 12 feet long 4in x 4in wooden posts, 10 feet apart, at the corner of the yard’s space to create an ‘L’ shape backdrop.
Next, we nailed and tied a ‘Black Vinyl Coated Cable’ from one wooden post to another to hang the fabric. I used colorful tulle fabric to generate tulle curtains, to add required color and further accentuating the ambiance. I repurposed the available tulle fabric I had from my Holi party décor. You can read my Holi post, for Holi Party ideas, which you may find interesting.
Then we added Twinkle Star 300 LED Window Curtain lights on the back of the tulle to illuminate the fabric. We used ten curtain lights for 60 feet of lighting for the backdrop. The tulle fabric with its strung lights created a stunning design when backlit, and our guests thought it looked absolutely magical for our Diwali celebration.
I also hung faux marigold garlands, white jasmine flowers, and fabric tassels, which I sourced from India through various vendors on Etsy. Any Diwali celebration would be incomplete without these flowers and decorations.
Our Guests Loved Our Diwali Lights Ideas!
The Diwali lighting design project that we worked on so diligently for our celebration was well worth the effort! Our children loved how our backyard sparkled, and they had fun helping us light up our backyard. Our guests were thrilled with our festive lighting design, and we were proud to be share the traditions of our Diwali culture with loved ones and friends.
Where to Buy Lights for Diwali
Below are direct amazon links for where to buy the Diwali lights mentioned in this post. Alternatively, you may also visit the EYP Amazon shop to find all the lighting in one place.
- Feit Electric 710090 48ft LED String Light
- Twinkle Star 300 LED Window Curtain String Light for Christmas Wedding Party Home Garden Bedroom Outdoor Indoor Wall Decorations (Warm White)
- GE StayBright 8-ft x 6-ft Indoor/Outdoor Constant Multicolor LED Mini Plug-in Christmas Net Lights Energy Star
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