Ideas & guides · Design
One-Sided Props Have a Back, and Somebody Always Sees It
The cut-outs look great from the sidewalk. From the side street they look like scenery propped up backstage. Is there a fix that is not buying everything twice?
Angle them or paint them. A flat prop has one good viewing arc of roughly ninety degrees, and the job is to make sure the arc points at where people actually are. On a lot with two frontages that means turning the props toward the corner rather than squaring them to the house.
4 minute read.
Which lots have this problem
A standard mid-block lot has one viewing position, more or less: the sidewalk in front of the house, plus a few degrees either side as a car goes past. Flat props are perfect there, which is why they are sold as though every yard is that yard.
A corner lot has two frontages meeting at a right angle, so there is a continuous ninety degree arc of positions people look from, and a prop squared up to the house is edge-on to half of it. A long driveway is worse, because visitors travel along its whole length and see every prop from in front, from the side and from behind, in that order.
Split-level and sloped lots have a milder version: the raised part of the yard is seen from below at an angle rather than straight on.
Four fixes, cheapest first
| Fix | Cost | When it is the right one |
|---|---|---|
| Turn it to face the corner | Nothing | Always try this first. Aiming the good arc at where people stand solves most of it for free. |
| Paint the back | An afternoon | Any prop that genuinely gets seen from two sides. It does not need detail, it needs to not be bare plywood. |
| Put it against something | Nothing | A fence, a hedge or the house wall behind the prop means there is no behind to see. |
| Build it double-sided | Roughly twice the sheet | Only for the one or two centrepiece props on a lot where every angle is public. |
The first and third cost nothing and between them handle most yards. Building everything double-sided is the answer people jump to and it is rarely the one worth paying for.
Two frontages, drawn
Corner Lot, 60 ft of frontage, Spiders, Spiders, Spiders at One nice thing. 8 spots filled, $274.91 of a $500 ceiling.
A corner lot has street along the bottom and street along the left, so the viewing arc runs continuously between them. Anything flat wants to be turned toward the junction of the two rather than squared up to the front wall of the house.
Black. Not a scene, not a second copy of the front, just flat black exterior paint on the reverse. At night a black back reads as nothing at all, which is far better than reading as a rectangle of bare wood, and it takes twenty minutes for the whole set. Prime it as well if it is going to live outside, because the back is the side that holds water.
Where this usually goes wrong
Squaring everything to the house
It is the instinct, because the house is the thing with straight lines. On a corner lot it points half your props edge-on to half your audience. Aim them at people instead of at architecture.
Leaving the bracing visible
The stakes, battens and offcuts holding a prop up are on the back, unpainted, and they are what makes it read as a stage flat rather than as a shape. If the back is visible at all, the bracing matters more than the paint.
Building everything double-sided to be safe
It doubles the plywood and the paint for a problem that turning the prop usually solves for nothing. Work out which props are genuinely seen from two sides, and there are normally one or two.
The corner lot and the long rural driveway are two of the ten shapes on this site, and both are planned with the second viewing angle already accounted for.
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 itHow to Light a Silhouette So It Does Not Look Like Plywood
A flat prop lit from the front is a board with paint on it. The same prop lit from behind is a shape nobody is sure about. The light costs less than the plywood.
Read itHow Do I Make a Small Halloween Display Look Bigger?
Light the ground, not the objects. A ten-pack of path stakes covers 36 feet for about $24 and buys more apparent size than any single thing you can buy.
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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.