Lit wreaths and garland: sizing and placing them on your house

Where wreaths and garland go

A lit wreath and a run of garland do one job on the outside of a house: they give the eye a place to land after it follows the roofline. The wreath marks the entry or the center of the facade, and the garland frames it. In practice that means a wreath on the front door sized to the door width minus about 12 inches, garland up the door trim and along the porch rail, lights the same white as the roofline, and every piece within reach of an outdoor outlet.

On most Macomb and Oakland County houses there are only a handful of good spots:

• The front door. The one people see up close, so it gets the best wreath.
• The tallest front gable. A wreath centered below the peak works on colonials, Cape Cods and especially Tudors, where a steep gable faces the street.
• Upper windows, in a set. Matching wreaths on every second-floor window facing the street, or none. One or two looks like you ran out.
• The door surround. Garland running up one side of the trim, across the head and down the other side.
• Porch rails and posts. Garland along a front railing, a stoop rail, or wound up a porch column.

Skip the spots that fight the roofline. A wreath on the garage door competes with the entry for attention, and garland along a gutter only doubles a line the roofline lights already draw. In the Grosse Pointes, the look the lake streets are known for is warm white on the eaves, greenery on the door and the rails, and nothing more. It is a good model for any brick or stone house.

Sizing a wreath to the spot

The rule most wreath makers use for a door is simple: measure the width of the door slab itself, not the trim, and subtract 12 inches. A standard 36-inch front door gets a 24-inch wreath, which leaves about 6 inches of door showing on each side.

Hang it at eye level, with the center about 57 to 60 inches off the floor. On an 80-inch door with a 24-inch wreath, that puts the top of the wreath roughly 8 to 11 inches below the top of the door.

Plenty of houses here have a storm door, and it changes the math. With a storm door the wreath hangs on the outside glass, or on the entry door behind it, where it has to be thin. Pick one only a couple of inches deep so the storm door can close without crushing it, and use a hanger made for glass or the storm door frame. Never drive a nail through the entry door itself. It starts a draft and damages the door over time.

Gables and windows

No door chart helps here, because a gable wreath is seen from across the street, not from the porch. The honest method is a mockup. Cut a circle of cardboard the size you are considering, have someone hold it in place, and walk to the far curb. A wreath that looks huge on the ladder often reads as a dot from across the street. Under a steep Tudor peak, size it to the flat wall area below the point, not to the peak.

Window wreaths should leave a clear border of trim or glass all the way around. Every window in the set gets the same size, even if one window is a little narrower. From the street, a uniform row reads better than wreaths fitted to each opening.

Garland on doors and railings

Garland is the easiest decoration to get wrong by length. Too short and it stops halfway down the door trim. Too long and it piles on the stoop. Measure before you buy:

1. Lay a string where the garland will go. Run it from the ground up one side of the door trim, across the head and down the other side, following the exact path, including any drape you want at the top. The string is your garland length.
2. Add a little for the ends. Tucked behind a planter looks better than cut off square at the ground.
3. Check the package length and divide. Garland is sold in fixed lengths, so a full door surround on a standard door usually takes more than one piece. Buy enough to overlap the joints behind a bow or a cluster of greenery.
4. For railings, decide wrap or swag first. A spiral around the rail uses far more length than a straight run on top of it. A swag between posts needs extra for each dip.
5. For columns, count the turns. Wind the string up at the spacing you like, then measure it.

Attach garland with hooks, clips or ties on the trim and the rail, not with nails into brick or mortar. On brick, the door trim is almost always wood, vinyl or composite, and that is where the clips belong. For more on what masonry will and will not hold, read lighting a brick house.

Plan for the weather. Wet snow lands on porch-rail garland and sits there, and the wind in an open subdivision works at any slack tie all winter. Tie at every post and every few feet between them, and snug the ties again after the first heavy snow.

Matching the light color

The most common mistake with lit greenery is a wreath that is a different white from the roofline. A warm white roofline next to a bluish wreath on the door looks like two houses stuck together. Buy greenery by the color of its lights, not just the greenery.

• Warm white roofline. Buy wreaths and garland labeled warm white. This is the match for brick, stone and most Tudors and colonials.
• Cool white roofline. Cool white greenery. Warm wreath lights look yellow next to a cool eave line.
• Red and green or multicolor roofline. Warm white greenery still works, and it keeps the entry calm. Multicolor wreath lights next to a busy roofline pattern usually look cluttered.

Warm white is not one color, either. A cheap string of mini lights on a wreath can be noticeably more orange than an LED roofline. Buy one piece first, plug it in next to the roofline after dark and look from the street before you buy the rest. Our guide to warm white or cool white on the roofline explains how to read the numbers on the box.

If the roofline is permanent, you have an advantage. Color and brightness on a permanent system are set from your phone, so it is easier to nudge the roofline toward the wreath than to hunt for a wreath that matches the roofline. Brightness matters too: a dense wreath can outshine a roofline set low. For patterns that pair well with greenery, see Christmas patterns for permanent lights.

Where the outlet is decides where it hangs

Before you choose a single spot, walk around the front of the house and find every outdoor outlet. There are usually only one or two: one near the front door or porch, maybe one on the garage. That short list decides more of the design than taste does.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission advises using lights marked for outdoor use, plugging them only into a GFCI-protected outlet or a portable GFCI, and checking that every extension cord is rated for the job. If your porch outlet is not GFCI-protected, ask an electrician about it before the season, not during it.

With the outlet mapped, the spots sort themselves:

• Door wreath and door garland. Usually plug-in, from the porch outlet. Run the cord behind the garland on the trim so it disappears.
• Porch rail garland. Plug-in if the outlet is on the porch. Otherwise the cord crosses the walk, a trip hazard all winter.
• Gable wreath. Usually battery. A cord from a peak down a brick or stucco wall shows in daylight and has nowhere to hide.
• Window wreaths. Usually battery too, for the same reason, since there is rarely an outlet near a second-floor window on the outside.

Battery greenery has its own Michigan problem: cold. Energizer explains that as an alkaline battery nears freezing, the chemistry inside slows down and run time drops. It comes back only when the battery warms toward room temperature. So a wreath that runs all evening on a mild November night may not last as long on a January night. Keep spares inside. Whatever powers it, put it on the same schedule as the roofline, using the wreath's built-in timer if it has one, or an outdoor timer for plug-in pieces.

Adding them to a display

If you are planning roofline lights this year, plan the greenery with them, not after. A Tudor with a steep front gable and an arched door is the clearest case. The roofline traces the gable, the gable wreath sits under the peak, and the door wreath and garland finish the line at street level.

Beyond the roofline itself, lit wreaths and garland are what we add, and they are priced with the design. Mark on the estimate where you want them.

On a permanent system the roofline stays up all year, so the greenery is the only seasonal piece. On a seasonal C9 lease, the whole display is seasonal. We own the C9 lights, hang them in November and take them down in January. Either way, the roofline is priced by the foot, and the wreaths and garland are priced as part of that same design. A 180 ft front, typical of the steep-gabled Tudors in the Pointes and in Birmingham, runs $4,000–$6,100 once for permanent lighting. Leased as C9, the same front is $3,200–$5,800 each season.

Start with the roofline. Stand across the street, photograph the house square to the facade and load that picture into the LightCast measuring tool. Tap the garage door to set the scale, and the tool returns the lit footage, the peaks and a price for both options. Your browser handles the picture, and it is never uploaded. Then request an estimate and list the door, gables and rails you want dressed.

Where this applies

Typical roofline lengths and priced examples for these communities are on their own pages.

• Grosse Pointe
• Birmingham

Sources

1. The Painted Hinge: Wreath size and placement for any door thepaintedhinge.com
2. Darby Creek Trading: Selecting the perfect size wreath for your front door darbycreektrading.com
3. Larson Doors: How to hang a wreath on a storm door larsondoors.com
4. Window World: Ways to hang a wreath on a window or door windowworld.com
5. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: Holiday decorating safety cpsc.gov
6. Energizer: Alkaline batteries frequently asked questions data.energizer.com