Benton-Stephens Christmas Light Installation — Columbia

Small houses, strong lines

Benton-Stephens takes its name from the school and the college it sits between, and the housing tells you the era it grew up in: bungalows and one-and-a-half storeys, front dormers, low porch roofs, detached garages down the side, and mature street trees on both curbs. These are not enormous rooflines. That is exactly why they photograph so well when the line is level and the spacing is honest — the whole house fits in one glance, and any wobble in the run is the first thing your eye lands on.

Is a bungalow worth a professional install?

It is one of the better value jobs on our list. Low, accessible rooflines mean less time on ladders and more of your money in the lights themselves. A bungalow front usually needs one clean roofline run, the porch edge, and a wrapped tree — and it is finished, properly, in a morning.

What do you do with a front dormer?

Outline it. A dormer is the one bit of vertical interest a bungalow has, and picking it out gives the front elevation a centre. Done well it looks deliberate; skipped, the house reads flat. It is a small addition to the price and it changes the whole look.

Can we do color without it looking like a lot?

Yes — put the color at ground level. Warm white along the roof and porch keeps the architecture clean, then a wrapped tree in brilliant green or a red-and-white accent gives the kids what they are after. On a compact front, that split does more than trying to run color along the whole roofline.

We are close to neighbours. Is that a problem?

No, and it is worth turning to your advantage. Lots here are narrow, so what your neighbour hangs is part of your view whether you like it or not. If two or three of you on a run book together, we will keep the bulb temperature consistent across the houses and the whole stretch of street lifts.