July in Aligarh does not argue with a gate light. It sits on it. Morning dew, a three-day wet spell, then sun that cooks the same metal by afternoon. If you sell outdoor fittings long enough, you stop talking about "weather-proof" as a slogan. You talk about what you see when someone brings a rusty lantern back in a bag.
We have cast aluminium here since 1990, and the calls from old jobs are usually for a holder or a glass. The body has not gone orange. The test we use is a pillar that stays wet, which is a different thing from a lab report.
What rain does
Water doesn't need a flood. It needs a joint: the cap, the hinge of the door, the lip where the lantern sits on the stone. North Indian rain isn't polite. It comes sideways and sits overnight, and then the sun hits and whatever was trapped under a chip of paint starts working.
Iron looks the same as aluminium in a shop. After two or three monsoons you get the stain down the pillar, that rust tea nobody asked for. Once the powder coat on iron cracks, moisture sits underneath and the iron rusts from the inside. You can't wipe that off.
Delhi, Gurugram, Lucknow and Jaipur follow the same cycle of a wet night and a cooked afternoon, and we already send fittings there. The city name doesn't change the metal, and a farmhouse in Chhatarpur gets the same rain physics as a lane in Aligarh. If someone tells you "this iron is outdoor grade", ask who pays for the rust streak on the plaster.
Cast aluminium doesn't get a free pass because we like it. It oxidises on the surface and then mostly stops. The powder coat and the antique wipe on our pieces are for how they look. They aren't a bandage holding a rotting body together, and if a finish gets knocked you still have metal, not a hole.
Finish is not the same as the body
People mix this up. Antique gold that photographs well on a dry afternoon can still be a thin wipe over powder coat, and that wipe will dull faster in rain and dust than a matte black you maintain. The body still has to be aluminium, because once the coating opens, an iron lantern is iron again and the pillar pays for it.
On our catalogue pieces the sequence is a die-cast body, then the powder coat, then the antique or black you pick. Glass or acrylic is as specified, with a B22 holder unless you ask for something else. LED and glass can go in or stay out, and that is what the quote says, not a mystery box.
Sideways rain finds a cheap hinge. If the lantern's door doesn't shut flush, the bowl is a bucket by morning. We'd rather you pick a model from the gate light catalogue whose door you can latch than a pretty sketch that never sat through a July.
What the warranty covers, and what a monsoon installer can ruin
What we will replace is on the returns page: the failed part, within twelve months, and not the money you paid. A glass you report a month after transit is not that part, because transit damage needs a photo within forty-eight hours. Change of mind, custom sizes and a fitting that was drilled like a water tank are not factory faults.
A monsoon doesn't care about your electrician. Open glands, a hole in the cap with no drip loop, or a lantern left with the door ajar so the bowl becomes a bucket are all installation problems. We will still talk on WhatsApp, but we won't pretend the monsoon "ate" a light that was left full of water.
If you are choosing now
If the pillar sees open sky, don't buy iron because it was cheaper on the counter. If you already have aluminium and the finish looks tired after a wet year, that is cosmetic and the body is probably fine. Send a photo of the pillar and the fitting. I would rather tell you to wipe it and change a holder than sell you a pair you don't need.
If the holder has failed and we have the part, a small replacement can leave the works inside a working week when the part is on the shelf, and a bigger batch takes longer. That is the same desk as a new order, not a call centre reading a script. Read returns before you assume a cash refund. There isn't one. There is a part.
WhatsApp +91 70176 62533 with a picture. The model number can wait.