Ideas & guides · Plan your yard
How to Decorate a Corner Lot for Christmas
The house faces two streets and everything I put up looks good from one of them and wrong from the other. How do people actually do this?
Treat it as one display with two front elevations rather than a front and a side. Light both street-facing rooflines, because roofline is the element seen from furthest away and a corner lot has two of them. Skip flat one-sided pieces, which show their backs to half your audience. Put something low and well-finished near the intersection, which is the most-seen ground you own, and keep it under about 3 ft for the sight triangle. Budget for roughly double the linear feet of lights a mid-block house needs.
7 minute read.
The roofline arithmetic, done before you buy
This is the part that catches people, and it catches them at the till rather than in the yard.
A mid-block house presents one elevation to the street and wants one roofline run. A corner house presents two, and if you light one and not the other the unlit side does not read as a side — it reads as the half you did not finish. So the honest starting figure is close to twice the light run.
Measure both eaves before buying anything. Then buy by lit length rather than by the number on the box, because those are routinely different: a set advertised at 65 ft is commonly 33 ft of lit run plus lead cable. Buying two elevations by packaged length is how a corner house ends up with one and a half rooflines lit.
Buy the whole run in one go. A tone change halfway along a roofline is the most obvious lighting mistake there is, and on a corner lot you have two long continuous runs meeting at a corner where any difference between them is directly visible in one glance.
What it looks like laid out
Corner Lot, 60 ft of frontage, Classic White Christmas at One nice thing. 6 spots filled, $477.36 of a $500 ceiling.
Both street-facing eaves lit, the tall pieces back against the house where the sightlines do not run, and the corner itself taking low path markers. The arrangement is symmetrical about the entry rather than about the lot, because that is what somebody on either street is looking at.
Why flat pieces are the wrong buy here
A one-sided piece — a plywood cutout, a printed sign, a flat lit panel — has a front and a back, and a corner lot has an audience on two sides. Whichever way you point it, half the people who pass see the back of it, and the back of a one-sided piece is plywood or a bare wire frame.
Three-dimensional things do not have this problem. Inflatables read from any angle. Lighted wire figures are see-through, so they read from every direction and look intentional from all of them. Lit trees, spirals, arches and anything built round a vertical axis all work.
If you already own flat pieces, the fix is placement rather than replacement. Put them flat against the house wall, where the wall is the back, or angle them into the corner formed by the entry so both street views see a front. A flat piece with its back to a wall is a perfectly good piece.
And the same argument runs in reverse for the one flat thing that does work on a corner: the garage or gable wall facing the intersection is a large blank surface with two streets looking at it, which makes it the best projection or silhouette surface most corner lots own.
The corner itself
The square footage nearest the intersection is the most-seen ground on the property. Everybody on both streets passes within a few feet of it and a good share of them stop at a sign, which gives you a stationary audience at conversational distance — something no other part of a front yard ever gets.
It is also the part that is legally constrained. Most United States cities require a sight triangle at intersections kept clear to about 3 ft, measured from street grade, extending 25 to 35 ft back along each kerb. Check your own city's figure, because they vary by nearly a factor of two.
Those two facts point the same way rather than fighting: the corner wants low and detailed, which is what it would want anyway. Path markers, a cluster of small lit figures, a run along a low fence, a wreath on a corner post. Things worth looking at from six feet.
What it does not want is the centrepiece. That goes back against the house where it is legal, sheltered from wind, and framed by the building — and where it still reads from both streets because height carries.
Corner lot, against a mid-block house of the same size
| Mid-block | Corner lot | |
|---|---|---|
| Roofline run | One elevation | Two elevations, close to double |
| Best piece goes | Centre of the lawn | Back against the house, framed by it |
| Flat one-sided pieces | Fine, everyone sees the front | Poor, half the audience sees the back |
| Height limits | Generally none | About 3 ft inside the sight triangle |
| Most-seen ground | Directly in front of the door | The intersection corner |
| Wind exposure | Usually sheltered on one side | Open on two, so anchor harder |
The wind row is worth not skipping. A corner lot is open on two sides with nothing upwind, which is why corner lots lose more inflatables than anybody expects. Use every tether and stake them wide.
Drive or walk each street in both directions, at night, from about a hundred feet out. Four passes, ten minutes. You are looking for where the house actually reads from and where the roofline disappears behind a tree.
People plan a corner lot from the front path, which is the one vantage point almost nobody else ever uses.
Where this usually goes wrong
Treating one street as the front and the other as the side
The side street still has traffic and still has neighbours, and a half-lit corner house reads as unfinished rather than as focused. Both elevations get the roofline or neither does.
Buying light sets by packaged length for two elevations
The lit run is often half the advertised length, and the error doubles on a corner lot. Measure both eaves, then buy by lit length only.
Putting the tall centrepiece near the intersection
It is the most visible spot, which is exactly why cities regulate it. Anything over about 3 ft in the sight triangle is an enforceable problem, and the letter arrives after the display is up.
Anchoring as though it were a sheltered yard
A corner lot is open on two sides. The same inflatable that stands all season mid-block goes over on a corner, and it goes over by tipping, so it is the tethers rather than the stakes that need the attention.
Arranging it symmetrically about the lot
Symmetry about the property line means nothing to anybody. Arrange about the front door, which is what a person actually reads as the centre of a house.
The corner lot plans here cap the corner slots at 3 ft, run both street-facing rooflines, and total the lit length so you can see what two elevations really costs before you buy the first set.
Read next
How to Decorate a Corner Lot for Halloween
Two frontages, twice the audience, and almost everybody decorates one of them. The intersection corner is the most-seen ground you own and it is usually bare.
Read itWhat Is a Sight Triangle, and Does It Apply to My Yard?
The clear-view zone at a corner that most cities cap at around 3 ft. It applies to every corner lot, it is enforceable, and it governs the most-seen square foot you own.
Read itOne-Sided Props Have a Back, and Somebody Always Sees It
Flat props look superb from one angle and like a sheet of plywood from every other. On a corner lot or a long driveway, every other angle is most of them.
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New guides go up through the season
Each one is a lot shape or a problem worked all the way through, the same as this one, and they are all free to read. No schedule worth promising, but they keep coming.