Christmas Light Installation in Fairfax, VA

Lighting a house in Fairfax.

A lot of Fairfax was built in the fifties, sixties and seventies, and the trees planted then are now taller than the houses. That is the first thing a display here has to deal with. On a street in Mantua or near Old Town Fairfax, the oaks and tulip poplars out front can be the biggest thing on the lot, and their limbs often cross the roofline you were planning to light. We walk the curb before we design anything, so the lights go where they can actually be seen and not behind a wall of branches.

The houses under those trees are mostly split levels and center-hall colonials, and they ask for different things. A split level has a low wing and a raised wing side by side, so its roofline steps up halfway across the front. Run one line across both and it reads as a mistake. We treat each level as its own plane and let the step show. The colonials are simpler and more symmetrical, so the design tends to frame the front door, the shutters and the main gable rather than chase every edge of the roof.

We work throughout Fairfax and the area around it, including The City of Fairfax, Old Town Fairfax, Mantua, Fair Oaks, Penderbrook and the streets off Main Street, Chain Bridge Road and Route 50.