Blog

Wrapping A tree

GETTING YOUR PALM TREE PERFECT

Wrapping outdoor trees in lights can elevate your outdoor party, wedding, or Christmas display from great to spectacular. It's a wonderful way to make sightseeing Christmas Enthusiasts say "ooh" and "ahh" as they slowly pass by your home.

Select Your Lights
There are no hard and fast rules about what lights to use. Smaller bulbs are generally better since they tend to accent the natural curves of the tree without overwhelming it. We use incandescent or LED mini lights. Incandescent lights generally cost less and have a warmness that LED can’t match, but for large trees you must run extension cords to support more strands. Generally linked incandescent light strands cannot exceed 300 ft. This varies by manufacturer so check the lights you buy.

Select Your Trees
Consider other lighting displays planned and overall symmetry. Try to have you trees seamlessly integrate with existing displays. It is better to light a few trees very luxuriously that many sparsely.

Select Your Trunk Style
There are two different trunk wrapping styles, natural and dense.
For the natural style, look at the tree’s diameter and judge what looks good. For very small trees (4 in diameter), space the lights 4 inches apart. For large trees (1+ ft in diameter), space the lights 1 foot apart. This style gives you maximum bang for your buck. You get nice looking trees for much less work than the dense style. At nighttime, the lights blend giving you a very natural look.
Photo - natural style
For the dense style, space the lights 4-6 inches apart no matter the tree diameter. This style gives you an awe-inspiring theme park-esque feeling. However, some people complain that it looks too artificial, and it requires about twice as much work and twice as many lights as the natural style.

Plan Your Trunks
For single trunk trees like palm trees, simply wrap the trunk.
For multi-trunk trees, you will need to wrap the trunk up to where it splits. If it splits into more than two trunks, run an extension cord with a splitter to the split. Use the splitter on the extension cord to separate the strands. If you use the splitter build into the strands, you will likely blow a fuse in the lights. For each split consider the diameter and the length to plan for how long each section of lights will be.

Plan Your Foliage
Decide which parts of the small branches you plan to wrap. For a tree to look nice you need to wrap 30-50 percent of the branches spread uniformly through out the tree. Generally, you don’t need a splitter for each junction. Plan you path to make the strands end in the desired locations or plan to go out and back on some branches to make splits work. The key is uniformity. If using the out and back method, then space the lights twice as far apart on that section or run the lights back on a side of the tree that is rarely seen.
Photo-foliage

Measure Trees
For each tree you plan to wrap, measure the trunk lengths and the circumference. Decide how many times you plan to wrap the tree per foot.
For example, you have 4 palm trees in your front yard. You would like to light them up to 8 ft using the natural style. For the natural style, wrap the tree around 1 time per foot. Their circumference is 2 ft. So:
Lights for 1 palm tree: 8 ft tall x 1 wrap per ft x 2 ft per circumference + 8 ft tall = 24 ft
Lights for 4 palm trees: 24 ft of lights per 1 palm tree x 4 palm trees = 4 strands of at least 24 ft.

Plan for Time
Allot the time to install the lights yourself. Or call us at (619) 292-8792.
Single Trunk (3’ diameter) - Up to 8’ Height - Natural Style: 3 hours
Single Trunk (3’ diameter) - Up to 8’ Height - Dense Style: 4.5 hours
Single Trunk (3’ diameter) 0-4’ With 2 trunks(2’ diameter) from 4’ - 8’ - Natural Style: 4.5 hours
Single trunk (3’ diameter) 0-4’ With 2 trunks(2’ diameter) from 4’ - 8’ - Dense style: 7 hours
More Complex Trees: Time varies.