Light it up! Bring some brightness into your home for the cooler months with pretty lighting options

Fairy, festoon, chain, party, string and twinkle: we’re talking lights here, garland style. As the weather cools down, you can cheer up by giving your home some extra sparkle with beautiful lights.

There was a time when fairy lights meant a party – or Christmas. Thank goodness we’ve relaxed the rules these days! Fairy lights are still festive but they can also be romantic, glamorous, vintage, industrial, quirky and kitsch.

Let’s get the terminology right here: this category of lighting is generally referred to as “string” lighting.

Strings of lights can be hung in a festoon style which means the line is fixed at set intervals to create curves or drapes.

Strings of lights can also be wound around trees or fixed to building edges.

Party lights can be coloured, they can include little lanterns or other decorative features.

They are often hung in a festoon style. Twinkle lights, on the other hand, tend to be very small indoor lights which are used to decorate pieces of furniture or curtains. Tiny lights can be entwined with floral or leafy garlands and some are even be battery operated.

We’ve looked around Toowoomba and we reckon there’s a string of lights to suit every taste and budget – well, they range in price from $5 to $200.

Typo has twinkle lights including leafy cascading garlands. Kmart has LED solar string lights, coloured ball string lights, curtain lantern lights and twinkle lights starting at $8. You’ll find colour-changing string lights at Bunnings for $29 and commercial grade outdoor coloured lights at Beacon Lighting for $126.