Hiring a Professional
For Your Holiday Decor

Lynn Hiergeist stands in her driveway and watches a crew from a local Christmas Décor franchise turn her large gray stucco home into a traffic-stopper. Two men are on ladders, stringing white lights along the roof line and around the arched windows of the house, built on a bluff above the Fox River in Algonquin, Ill.; other workers wrap ropes of garland around entranceway pillars or add lights to shrubs and trees. The two-day job will cost Mrs. Hiergeist and her husband Pete about $4,000.

"We initially hired Christmas Décor two years ago, after our daughter Bridget, who was 10, came through serious spinal surgery. We thought it was a good way to celebrate," Mrs. Hiergeist says. "So many people told us how pretty our house was, we've had the installers come back every year."

Tom Kraak, a holiday-lighting designer for the franchisee, the Care of Trees in Wheeling, Ill., points down the bluff to a bridge spanning the narrow river below. "That's where traffic backs up, where people stop to look up at the house."

You, too, can hire a professional to help decorate your home for the holidays, whether your goal is to stop traffic or just slow down holiday stress. It may be too late for this year -- many of the pros we talked to are booked up months in advance -- but you can steal tips from them for this season while planning whom to hire for Christmas 2005.

Lights to Stop Traffic

Christmas Décor, in Lubbock, Texas, has almost 400 franchisees around the country, who will charge you $500 to $5,000 or more to light up your house and greenery and add artificial lighted wreaths and garlands to your doors. Established customers get the pick of early installation times, but most franchisees will decorate houses for newcomers until December 21. Last year, Care of Trees decorated a house on Dec. 24, says Ellen Knell, the franchisee's coordinator.

Other outfits that specialize in architectural and landscape lighting may also provide an outdoor-decorating service. Bob Lyons, a franchisee with Outdoor Lighting Perspectives in Nashville, Tenn., for example, charges customers $25 to $30 for each string of 100 miniature lights his crews install. The average job, he says, costs homeowners about $2,400.

Smithfield Gardens, a landscape-architecture and construction company in Lake Forest, Ill., has 15 people installing holiday lights on about 160 houses this year, at a cost of $1,500 to $7,000. "It's a joke among the salespeople that owners of larger homes may want a small design, while some people in smaller houses go nuts," says Richard Rinalo, vice president of sales.

Smithfield customer Juli Marshall says she and her husband, who are both attorneys, simply don't have time to set up outside lights. "It's so convenient," she says, "and our four children love the festive look."

Professional decorators say the cost of electricity to light these displays varies and usually isn't an issue for their clients. A typical Care of Trees outdoor light display adds only $50 to $75 to an electric bill. Homeowners concerned about expenses put their lights on timers.

If you're creating a festive look on your own, the professionals suggest:

• The trend today is elegant, not overwhelming, says Lou Leggett, an arborist with the Christmas Décor franchisee decorating Mrs. Hiergeist's house. Stick with white lights or, if you must, add just one color. The pros say, those lights that look like icicles are "so last year."
• "The biggest mistake homeowners make is not using enough lights," says Mr. Rinalo. It's better to wrap all the branches of one tree than to scatter the same number of lighting strands over several trees and bushes."
• If you like novelty, several professionals recommend "Linkables," lighted snowflakes, stockings and candy canes you can mount along your roofline. They're available from Brite Ideas, in Omaha, Neb.

Decking the Inside Walls

Upscale florists will be thrilled to decorate your tree with unique ornaments and add garlands to your mantles and staircases and fresh flowers to your tables for, of course, an upscale price. Terry McDermid, manager and head designer for Flowers by Robert Livermore in Lake Forest, Ill., says, "It's not unusual, if we're doing most of a home, that prices can be in the neighborhood of $5,000."

"We begin by meeting with the homeowners, to talk about how elaborate a look they want," Ms. McDermid says, "and to measure their sense of style." Such vetting takes time and, she warns, "Our dance cards fill up quickly."

Or you can get a professional touch -- and barely touch your wallet -- by calling in a makeover artist. Interior Redesign Industry Specialists (IRIS). IRIS is a 400-member organization of mostly women who do one-day interior makeovers using homeowners' existing items, says director Marcia Smart in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Think "Trading Spaces" without the paint job.

Joan Marie Hess, of Inspirations -- Distinctive Home Accents, in Media, Pa., for example, also does holiday decorating for $50 an hour, plus an additional $30 if customers want fresh greens, pinecones and holly branches from her yard. This year she's helping customers create theme trees -- Victorian is big -- for their formal living rooms, plus whimsical trees for their family rooms, using all their children's hand-crafted ornaments. "I tell people to scour their houses before I arrive, and to pull out all their crystal and silver as well as their ornaments," she says. "I never know what I'll want to incorporate."

You can incorporate these professional tips into your decorating:

• Declutter first. Put away all the knickknacks you have on your tables and counters before hauling out the holiday decorations, says Lesa Cooper, of Redesigning Women in Henderson, Nev. Select your focal point, generally where the tree is, and rearrange your furniture to face it.
• This year's "eye-popper," Ms. Cooper says, is picking one or two colors, like red and gold, or blue and silver, and having decorations with the same colors flow throughout your home.
• If you must haul out Aunt Tilly's collection of Santa figurines, at least display them at different heights, using boxes covered with color-coordinated napkins, says IRIS member Robin Doubek of Ready for Show Interiors in Park Ridge, Ill.
• Use lots of poinsettias, says florist Ms. McDermid, especially the new varieties. "They're great show for the dough."
• Finally, don't get lost in the glitter. Outdoor Lighting Perspectives franchisee Mr. Lyons says he had a customer who wanted him to decorate two trees, at a cost of $2,500 each, on December 23. "I told him it was sinful to spend so much money for only a couple of days," Mr. Lyons said, "and talked him into giving the money to a charity that gave $100 gift certificates to 50 needy kids instead."

-- Ms. Bennett is a free-lance journalist based in Northbrook, Ill.

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