People ask for "a pole light" as if a garden path and a driveway were the same drawing. They aren't. This note is the buyer's split: how tall, and in what metal, when the lantern is for a garden walk versus the drive up to the house. The models themselves are on cast aluminium pole lanterns for driveways and gardens. Measured centre-to-centre gaps (the run length, the trees, one side or both) are in driveway pole spacing, so don't treat this page as that spacing sheet, and don't treat the category page as this question.
Garden path: keep the head near the planting
A walk between the lawn and a side veranda is a different job from the approach a car uses. On internal garden paths we have usually seen shorter poles work, often around four to five feet, because the lantern is read at walking pace next to shrubs, not from the road. Go shorter than that and the head disappears into a hedge. Go as tall as a driveway pole on a two-foot-wide path and the fitting looks like it was borrowed from a boulevard.
Ask three things before you pick a garden code. Is the path beside a low planting bed or a compound wall? Will people brush the glass with a shoulder? Is the walk covered for part of its length, so dew is the weather rather than a full monsoon sheet? A path lantern still wants cast aluminium if it lives outside, and it doesn't want a driveway shaft just because the catalogue photo was taken at night on a long drive.
The poles we cast run from about two feet up to fifteen, depending on the line. The short end of that range is the garden and bollard-like brief. The long end isn't a default for every plot.
Driveway: height follows the wall, not the mood board
The mistake on a drive is almost always too short. A pole that only reaches four feet looks like a path light parked in the middle of a car's approach. For a main drive we tell people to start at six feet and, on a property with any scale, to look at eight to ten. The workshop rule we still repeat is that the pole should be roughly one and a half to two times the height of the boundary it runs beside. A five-foot compound wall wants something nearer seven or eight feet if the lantern is meant to belong to that wall instead of floating at random.
That height also has to clear a car mirror and sit under a tree canopy, and bedroom windows on a narrow setback hate a glass face aimed at the pillow. Those are driveway geometry questions. Copying a garden-path code onto the drive doesn't answer them, and neither does a spacing slogan. Once the height band is chosen, measure the run and use the spacing note.
Same metal, different exposure
Both jobs live outdoors in Indian weather. Iron looks the same as aluminium under a shop tube light and then stains the plaster after wet seasons. Cast aluminium doesn't rust that way. It forms a thin surface layer and largely stops, and we have worked in aluminium since 1990 for that reason. Galvanised steel that loses its coating in humid air is a different product from what we cast. If a supplier won't let you lift the head, treat the word "aluminium" on the label as unfinished business, because real cast has weight and crisp detail, not edges pressed from thin sheet.
Finish is the skin, not the body. Antique gold and antique copper are the wipes that sit comfortably on most Indian houses. Matte black is the contemporary option, and it shows dust sooner. A mirror polish outdoors shows every hosepipe mark. Coastal salt and desert dust age the wipe, but they don't turn the aluminium into rust. The longer finish conversation is in powder coat and antique, and the metal comparison is in aluminium versus iron.
What to decide before you message
- Whether the job is a garden walk, a main drive or both. They can be different heights in one finish family.
- The height of the compound wall or the planting the pole stands beside.
- Whether cars, trees or bedroom windows constrain the head.
- The finish, and whether the head ships empty or with glass. The holder on our outdoor range is B22 unless the quote says otherwise.
Then open the pole lantern category or the catalogue PDF and send the codes with a photo of the path or the drive to +91 70176 62533. Piece count and freight are on About. If the question is how many metres between poles, leave this page and use the spacing guide, which covers the measured run.