Illuminating Impact Make The Outside Of Your Home As Festive As The Inside With Some Well-Placed Lights

Most of us transform our homes for the holidays, filling them with greenery, ornaments, beautifully wrapped gifts and wonderful things to eat. But don’t forget the exterior of your house. Outdoor holiday lights allow you to share the spirit of the season with your neighbors.

This year, why not try something new? Here are some ideas to inspire you.

Designing with light

A majestic evergreen dotted with twinkling white lights is always festive, but you may find that a string of lights has more impact against an unexpected backdrop.

Walk around your property and consider all its features - house, garage, sheds, trees, bushes, walkways, arbors, trellises and fences - before deciding which ones to highlight. Keep in mind that a little light goes a long way, so don’t illuminate everything; instead, choose just a few special spots.

Try outlining a table and chairs in light (for a whimsical setting), swagging the front fence or framing the tool shed instead of the porch.

Remember that even the tiniest light glows brightly once the sun goes down, so you probably don’t need as many strands as you think. The goal is to see the lights themselves, not to illuminate the outdoors.

Light show

Vary the effect with different bulb wattages, colors, sizes and reflectors (the faceted collars between the bulb and socket). A vast variety of holiday lights is available through mail order from a New York City store called Just Bulbs (212-228-7820, ext. 100 or 101).

A single strand of outdoor lights can usually accommodate a variety of bulbs (see “Working with lights,” below). Try mixing white bulbs that are bright and dim, big and small, for a look that imitates a starry sky. Use colored reflectors on white bulbs for just a hint of color.

Put white strands up on a tree, then replace a few of the bulbs with a different color, for a polka-dot effect. Or decorate one tree or bush in red, another in green and a third in blue.

One of my favorite ways to illuminate a tree is with grapevine balls electrified with small lights (see photo). They look like floating, glowing spheres in a tree that’s lost its leaves. To do this, wind a string of lights around a grapevine ball, using floral wire to secure the lights if necessary. Suspend the balls from a tree branch with string or wire, or nest them in the branches. Look for grapevine balls at floral-supply shops, or order them from Joe Makrancy’s Floral Shop (609-587-2543).

Snow lanterns

If you live in a colder climate, welcome holiday guests with topiarylike lanterns on either side of the front door. Made of snowballs, they mimic the shape of a Christmas tree.

Start by placing a 40-watt light fixture in a glass tumbler. Set it in a wide-mouthed bucket, decorative cast-iron urn or other container. Make equal-size, tightly packed snowballs, and use them to build an inverted cone of snowballs on the container, starting at its edge.

Icy candleholders are even simpler: Pack a smooth metal bucket with snow, then hollow it out, leaving a shell 1-1/2 to 2 inches thick. Pack the snow well, then carefully unmold the shell from the bucket. Spray with water to solidify, then place a glass tumbler inside with a candle. The finished product looks a bit like a giant votive candle.

Working with lights

If you take a few precautions, outdoor lights are safe and easy to install. It’s a good idea to wrap the connections between strands with wide electrical tape, and you should always use heavy-duty, exterior-use extension cords.

Whenever possible, plug the lights into their own electrical circuit (the garage, for example, is often wired separately from the house) so that if the fuse blows, it won’t affect anything indoors. Outdoor outlets should be fitted with ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCIs). Most newer homes have these (they’re the outlets with the reset buttons in the center).

As long as it fits the socket, almost any bulb can be plugged into any strand. The bulb wattages do not have to be the same, but, to be safe, make sure the total wattage of the bulbs doesn’t exceed 80 percent of the strand’s total wattage.

The box should indicate the wattage of both the bulbs (which range from 3 to 15 watts) and the strand (a standard strand is electrically rated at 600 watts). So, following the 80-percent rule, the bulbs used on a standard strand shouldn’t have a combined wattage of more than 480 watts. Just add up the numbers as you add bulbs.

When you take the lights down, store each strand in a separate plastic bag, or wind them around a spool meant for garden hoses. This way, they’ll be neat and untangled next year, ready for another display.

MEMO: Questions should be addressed to Martha Stewart, care of The New York Times Syndication Sales Corp., 122 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10168. Questions may also be sent to Stewart by electronic mail. Her address is: mstewart@marthastewart.com.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Martha Stewart New York Times Syndicate