North Pole Lighting plans every display on site, at the house, before a strand comes off the truck.
A Southwick crew that works these streets, across Hampden County and over the line into Hartford County.
A display is not judged from the front step. It is judged from a car going twenty five miles an hour. So Christmas light design starts at the curb and works back toward the house. We do the same walk in Westfield and Feeding Hills that we do here.
The plan is settled and approved before we put the ladders up.
Five decisions get made on the walk. All five happen before a quote goes out. A house in Suffield or Granby gets the same five.
A good plan is mostly subtraction. Almost any house can hold more lights than it should.
You are not inventing a shape. You are tracing one that is already there. Older center-entrance houses around here are symmetrical, which is easy to light and unforgiving when the line is off.
Warm white is what we hang. It is what most people picture when they picture a lit house. We buy it in bulk, so every run matches the next one. Other colors and options can be bought and quoted if you ask.
A roofline gives you a line. Bushes and an entry give you depth. A house with only a roofline reads flat from the road, and a house with only bushes disappears after dark. Most plans need both, and the balance shifts with how far back the house sits.
Longmeadow sets a minimum front setback of forty feet in every residential district. Its two main residential districts also require 125 to 150 feet of frontage. That distance does two things to a plan. Fine detail stops registering, and a crooked line becomes the only thing anyone notices. Over the line in Suffield the lots run narrow and deep. Houses sit closer to the street, so the entry carries more of the display.
After the roofline, the front door and the garage face do the most work. That is where the eye lands once it finishes the line.
Tall mature trees. The back of the house. A third-story gable with no safe footing. Anything a cord cannot reach without crossing a walkway. Saying it at the walk-around is the difference between a plan and a sales pitch.
LED strands changed the math on running a display all season. LED holiday strands use about 70 percent less energy than older incandescent strands. It is electricity, not the job. It is the reason nobody counts hours on a timer anymore.
That is why the beds get wrapped by hand into the shrubs, rather than skipped.
It is also why lit wreaths above the garage tend to be the second thing we plan.
Book the walk.
We come to the house and look at it from the street before the driveway.
Mark the plan.
We measure the runs, note the outlets, and mark what we would light and what we would not.
Set the coverage.
You decide how far the display goes: the roof, the ground work, the entry, or all of it.
Approve it.
Nothing gets ordered, built, or scheduled until you have signed off on the layout.
Warm white, on every house we light. Other colors and options can be bought and quoted if you ask.
It helps. The decisions get made standing in your driveway, and they are easier to settle with you there.
That is normal. Plenty of homes get the roof only, or the roof and the front entry, and nothing else.
By what reads from the street. We trace the lines the house already has, then add ground work for depth.
Yes. The runs are cut to your peaks, slopes, and dormers, so the line ends where the roof does.
Big round bulbs on the roofline, smaller ones around windows and doorframes, and wrapping strands for bushes and railings.
Yes. Nothing gets scheduled until you have approved the coverage and what stays dark.
Bushes, wreaths, greenery, porch railings, columns, and walkway accents. The roofline is usually the start, not the whole plan.
The walk-around is the same everywhere. The answer is different at every address.
Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Hampden, Wilbraham, Agawam, Feeding Hills, Southwick, Westfield, and Hampden County, Massachusetts. Suffield, West Suffield, and Granby, Connecticut, in Hartford County.
The plan comes first, and the plan is what protects your install date. Booking the walk early is how the good dates stay open.
Don't Be a Grinch
Book a free Christmas light design walk in Longmeadow and see the plan before you decide.
