Case study
Country House and Cedar, Virginia Water
A long roofline, a garlanded portico, and a six-metre cedar close-wound to the tip — the tree is the headline and the house frames it.
- Property
- Country house
- Area
- Virginia Water, Surrey
- Height
- Cedar at 6.1m
- Lights used
- 9,600 warm white LEDs
Schemes like this run £4,500–£7,000 for the season
The brief
A Georgian-style country house on the Wentworth estate at Virginia Water. Long frontage, columned portico, and a cedar on the front lawn that the family had wanted lit for years. Everything else on the brief was in service of that tree.
What we installed
- Warm white festoon along the full roofline and parapet return
- Fresh garland wound up both portico columns and across the pediment
- A 6.1m cedar close-wound to the tip, 9,600 warm white LEDs
- Two urns lit either side of the steps
How long does it take to light a six-metre tree?
Most of a day for two fitters, and almost none of it is the top. A cedar has heavy horizontal limbs, so the wrap has to follow each primary branch out and back or the tree looks bald from the side. We worked it off a small platform in rings from the bottom up, feeding from a single spine cable so the whole tree runs on one circuit and one fault does not kill half of it. Every string is rated for permanent outdoor use and fed from an RCD-protected external supply, tested and certificated on the day.
Why it works
There is a rule with big trees: light the tree properly and keep the house quiet, or you get two headlines and no picture. The house here is a single clean line plus a garlanded portico, which reads as a frame. The cedar is the subject. From the gates, three hundred metres away, you see the tree first and the house second — which is exactly the order the family wanted.
Related reading
Same treatment, your house
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