Seeking Layout & Design Advice

[Park Falls Lights]

Hi everyone

Seeking some advice. This year will be my second year putting up a display and I am trying to improve on the physical layout and props I had last year. Im much better with the technical than I am the aesthetics.

As you will see from the photo my big challenge is that we have a pretty limited field of view for the yard and house due to tress and bushes along the front of the property. There is really only the gap shown in the picture where you get visibility to the house, further left or right and its blocked out all together.

Last year I focused on trying to get most things on the roof so I had some mini trees, a couple of singing globes and a matrix up there along with the roof line of course. On the front fence I did some leaping arches and that was it.

As with all hobbies I want it to grown and improve but Im a bit lost for ideas how I can add to the display. I really want to do more on the fence line, and maybe something mid ground between the house and fence, just not sure what. One idea I did have was putting a couple of mega trees on the fence line at either side of the gap shown to 'frame up' the display so to speak, but I am a bit worried it might then just overshadow anything I do on the house.

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated......except for cutting down the trees, I asked and the wife said no

 

[AAH]

The fence I reckon I'd stick to leaping arches with maybe the far left and right ones having a fan inside them. Maybe pixicles along the fascia. An elevated megatree at either end of the house at mid distance between the house and fence with the base maybe 1.5m off the ground. Have a look at the videos by Geoff/aussiemas on https://auschristmaslighting.com/videos/page-18 . Geoff had about a 5ft high fence around both sides of his block so his display consited of stuff on the fence, stuff on the house and elevated stuff in between.
I have a similar issue with foliage. I decorate across about 70m of my frontage and there's shrubs and trees across a lot of it. There's only a few places where you can get an unobstructed view of the house part of the display and to see the whole lot you really need to stop in about 3 or 4 places.
I have no idea what to do between the fence and the front edge of the shrubs. I have a few dozen illuminated cutouts of Disney characters etc which fill up the volume and give the kids something to look at.

 

[i13]

That looks like a really big yard. I've had a similar tree situation for the last four seasons. Traditional LED strings are great at covering the distances that are needed to cover the trees themselves. They have their own learning curve but you do mention being good with the technical side of things. I would only recommend them if they're the look that you're aiming for because you'll end up replacing them with pixels in future if they're not. Pixels are much brighter and they stand out above the traditional strings. Taller trees can have pixel items hanging from their branches. It is also possible to attach pixels to the tree branches like this. It would work best on a tree with a sparse canopy.

 

[SmartAlecLights]

Pixel Tint Tubes for all the fence posts.. with archs, very effective, i do that in my show