Woodstock grew up along the railroad, and Main Street still runs beside the old line. Its storefronts have been restored into restaurants, shops, and a theater, and the newer mixed-use blocks beside them keep the same scale. Walk one street east or west and the buildings become houses: bungalows, cottages, and a few larger frame houses with porches that face the sidewalk. These are seen up close and on foot, especially in December, so they want light that is tidy at arm's length. A wreath that is actually lit. Garland that is full. One line of bulbs that follows the porch eave and stops.
Towne Lake came next, in the 1990s and early 2000s, on the ground west of Interstate 575 and south of Highway 92. The houses are two-story traditionals in brick and painted siding, often a brick front with siding on the sides, with a front gable or two over the garage and the entry. On that kind of house we light what the front elevation is doing: the main eave, the gables that face the street, and the entry. A wrapped trunk or two brings the display down to eye level. We leave the side elevations dark. Our warm-white roofline service explains why we stay near 2700K on both brick and paint.
North along Highway 92, Trickum Road, and Arnold Mill Road, the subdivisions are newer and the architecture has changed. Board-and-batten siding, metal porch roofs, black windows, stacked gables with steep pitches, and stone at the base. These farmhouse and craftsman houses sit on larger lots that keep some of Cherokee County's hardwoods, and many sit back from the road. The hard part is editing. A steep farmhouse roof can have five or six gables on the front, and lighting all of them makes the house look busy. We pick the tallest one and the one over the porch and let the rest read as shadow.
Takedown runs through January on every street in town. The lights are ours. We coil and label each run, and we store everything between seasons unless we have agreed on something else with you. The takedown and storage page covers how that works.
