Light It Up Professional holiday decorators give their tips on how to make the season bright, indoors and out By Serena Dai, CTW Features Every year, holiday lighting manufacturers introduce more varieties of bulbs, strands, colors and accessories. Luckily for the seasonal lighting industry (and those who love cruising the neighborhood, looking at lit-up houses), nobody seems to be willing to forego Christmas lights altogether, no matter their financial woes. Professional decorators say that there’s a trend towards nostalgic, natural-looking decorations rather than the energy-guzzling displays of the past. That means that LEDs are getting more popular and the Las Vegas marquee-style house is going extinct. The variety of products available leaves people at a loss when choosing the right lights for the job, so a few lighting professionals have given their tips on lighting each area of the house.
lighting guru, Beverly Hills, Calif. “We don’t want to have to go around the tree and tangle it and make it look like the tree is choked,” he says. Divide the tree into sections and then work from the top to the bottom, Robertson says. “That’ll create a nice, full tree,” he says. For a different look, Stephens recommends wrapping mini-LED lights up the trunk and then using larger C9 or C7 bulbs in the canopy.
Front Yard Trees
Lit trees in a front yard draw the most attention to a house, says Brandon Stephens, vice president of marketing at The Décor Group Inc. in Lubbock, Texas. Lights on a door or across the roof lining act as a backdrop. If you light a tree, that’s the thing that stops traffic, Stephens says. Using a lot of lights sets a property apart. Since a large tree requires plenty of light, use mini-LED strands. LED lights save energy and thus electricity costs, so they work well for massive outdoor undertakings. To make the tree look full, string the lights through the branches rather than around the outside, says Ric Robertson, Christmas
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