There’s nothing like holiday decorations adorning a home on a cold winter’s night to fill you with the holiday spirit.
But many homeowners would rather not brave chilly temperatures and scale tall ladders to decorate their homes for the holidays.
Maybe you don’t have the time, you’re unable to climb a ladder to hang lights or you’re decorating-impaired. If you’d like to jump on the decorating bandwagon but don’t want to do it yourself, help is available.
Many homeowners are turning to professionals to transform their home into a winter wonderland. Professionals will put up the lights, maintain the decorations and take them down and store them during the off-season.
Alzada Homko said she began paying someone to decorate her Summit home a few years ago because of her age.
“I’m 83 years old. I do it for the neighborhood. I’m the oldest one on the block,” Homko said. “It makes a big showing on Archer Road.”
Homko hires Kevin Morgan of Morgan’s Landscaping and Holiday Decorating in La Grange to put up lights on three big trees in her front yard and hang wreaths and other decorations on her home.
“Everything’s custom-made for the homeowner. Everything’s handmade. We put it up, take it down and there’s no hassle. They just enjoy it,” Morgan said.
Holiday decorators will drape your house in lights, hang garland, bows and wreaths, just about anything you can think of. Some decorate only the inside of a home, others decorate only the outside, while others do both. If you’re not sure what you want, professional decorators can help with that as well.
Morgan said his prices start at $500 and go up from there, depending on what the homeowner wants. He will decorate a home inside and out. He usually keeps the decorations and stores them off-season.
Morgan and other Christmas decorators also install additional electrical outlets outside a home if necessary so people don’t overload electrical circuits.
Morgan had some advice for those considering hiring a professional to decorate their home for the holidays:
– Determine a budget beforehand.
– Make sure the business is adequately insured with liability of $1 million or more.
– Ask for references.
Also, drive by some of the houses that have been decorated by professionals and see what their exteriors look like.
This year’s decorating trends are leaning toward traditional, decorators said.
Morgan said he’s had a lot of calls from customers wanting Santas from the 1940s or ’50s.
Joe Peddle, owner of Production Power Systems in Waukegan, also is seeing a shift back to traditional designs.
“It’s conservative this year–traditional and conservative,” said Peddle, whose company designs and decorates with garland, lighting, wreaths and bows at a cost ranging from $1,500 to $20,000.
“A lot of my clients are busy executive types and older people. The last thing they want to do when they get home is decorate their homes,” Peddle said.
His company installs electrical systems and remote controls if necessary to accommodate Christmas lights, and uses bucket trucks to light pine trees as tall as 75 to 100 feet.
“We’ve been doing it for about eight years. Business has been growing,” Peddle said.
Peddle’s clients are mostly North Shore homeowners in Wilmette, Winnetka, Lake Forest, Glencoe and Barrington. His business also decorates the downtown Highland Park business district.
Antoinette DiGregorio, owner of Fantasy Creations Christmas Designs in south suburban Country Club Hills, makes custom indoor holiday decorations including wreathes, garland with bows and table centerpieces as well as life-size or miniature animated Santa Clauses and elves.
“It’s all handmade. Most of it is one-of-a-kind,” said DiGregorio, whose merchandise ranges in price from $30 to $5,000.
Inside the home, purple and gold are the colors this year, according to interior stylist Julea Joseph, owner of Reinventing Space in Palos Park.
“You have to think out of the box with your Christmas traditions,” Joseph said.
Joseph said it’s important to have some good decorating staples that can be used year after year. For example, a big sterling silver or copper punch bowl filled with red shiny glass ornaments “instantly transforms into a centerpiece,” Joseph said.
You can also use fabric, either as a tablecloth, wrapped along a bookcase, or as a tree skirt, to make a decorating statement, she said.
Having your home professionally decorated for the holidays is becoming more popular as more people are staying home or having family and friends over for the holidays, experts said.
When Nicholas Ciacio lived with his parents, they would hire Morgan’s company to decorate the outside of their home for the holidays. After Ciacio bought his own home in Berwyn three years ago, he began hiring Morgan to transform his home into a winter wonderland.
“I do everything on the inside. He does the outside. He has the real garland and gets it at a better price. And he takes it down, which I hate [doing],” Ciacio said.
Ciacio rotates holidays with relatives, and when it’s his turn to have everyone over for Christmas, “I have him go all-out,” he said. Other years, “I tell him to make it look nice. I let him use his discretion.”
Ciacio said Morgan changes the main decorative yard display each year. One year it was reindeer, another year it was angels.
“I really don’t have the patience for it outside. I don’t have the creativity,” Ciacio said.
Marcie Compagno, manager of Phillip’s Displays Services in Oak Brook, said her company is usually booked up with homes to decorate by early November.
“A lot of people are staying home for the holidays. They want it warm and cozy,” said Compagno, adding that her company’s services can cost anywhere from about $200 to “tens of thousands of dollars.”
Todd Selin, vice president of Plandscape’s Christmas Decor, in Elburn, said he usually has to turn away customers because they get so booked up with holiday decorating.
“It’s increased every year we’ve been doing it. It’s more or less higher-income professionals who don’t have the time or shouldn’t be up on a ladder. Some of these homes you shouldn’t be up on the roofs because it’s too dangerous,” Selin said.
Selin said he wraps lights around each branch of the tree when decorating, which makes for a glorious display.
His company usually begins in mid-October putting lights along the roof lines and in the trees of homes. Then they go back around Thanksgiving and put up greenery and bows. The cost is usually $1,200 the first year (because you have to pay for the decorations) and about $600 in subsequent years. Depending on how elaborate you want it, the cost can run up to $10,000, Selin said.
His company installs, takes down and stores the decorations, he said.
Landscape designer Mary Oppenheim specializes in creating “winter interest containers” in planters and pots for customers of Scott Byron & Co., in Lake Bluff.
“We have a lot of residential customers who really enjoy having us plant flowers in the pots in the summer. We try to dress up the containers for winter, too. It’s the longest season of the year,” Oppenheim said.
She spruces up containers with small evergreens, red berries, dried flowers, magnolia branches, oak leaves and eucalyptus.
“They’re grateful for any splash of color you can give them. Some people have us put cut flowers from their gardens in there,” Oppenhiem said.
“People are more and more going for the simpler look. Evergreen trees with a topiary look, junipers, pines–it’s a classic, simple, understated look.”
Creating winter-interest containers is especially popular for those who live in condominiums and in the city, Oppenheim said.
“Containers are hot. So many people don’t have a lot of space, and they’re easy to take care of, and you can change it seasonally,” Oppenheim said. The price range for decorating containers runs from $75 to $200, she said.
Phil Cleland, owner of Chicago Specialty Gardens Inc., in Glenview, said his company specializes in holiday decorating for Chicago residents with limited space. He will cut down a Christmas tree in Wisconsin to a desired size, set it up in a customer’s home and let the homeowner do the decorating, Cleland said.
Cleland also does holiday decorating of containers and decorates front doors and fence lines with wreaths, swags, bows, berries and lights.
“A lot of our clients are in the city. They just don’t have the time or access to go buy this stuff,” Cleland said.
Michael Schuster, owner of Michael’s Christmas in Elk Grove Village, has been decorating the outside of homes since 1988.
“I find that a lot of people are busy and successful. Most are too busy to spend a weekend doing it,” Schuster said. The average cost is about $1,000, but it ranges from several hundred to several thousand dollars, he said.
“Usually when people hire us it’s because they want more than they would do themselves. For most, it’s for a special get-together. Many want us to have it done for Thanksgiving so they can have it lit for Thanksgiving,” Schuster said.
Schuster and others said people can usually tell when a home is professionally decorated versus when a homeowner decorates it.
“It looks like something you didn’t do yourself,” Schuster said.
