Christmas Net Lights: How To Choose And Size Nets For Bushes And Hedges
Net lights are the shortcut nobody tells you about. Wrapping a hedge with a string light takes fifteen minutes of weaving, arm above your head, trying to keep the spacing even so the front of the bush does not end up brighter than the side. A net light goes on in about thirty seconds and looks the same on every shrub in the row. That is the whole appeal: even coverage, fast, repeatable.
The catch is that nets only look good when the size and the count match the plant. Buy one net for a bush that needs three and you get a lit stripe with two dark shoulders. This guide covers how to size nets, how many to order, which style to pick, and how to power the row so it all comes on at once.
What A Net Light Actually Is
A net light is a grid of wire with bulbs at every intersection, made to drape over a plant instead of wrap around it. Our 5mm LED net lights are built on a 4' x 6' net with 100 bulbs on a 6" x 4" grid, on green wire that disappears into foliage. Each net draws 12 watts (0.1 amps) at 120 volts, carries a fused polarized male plug plus a female end, and is rated IP44 and UL Listed for indoor and outdoor use. The lead is 24" with a 4" tail, and the sockets are single-molded and sealed, so the bulbs are not removable — nothing to work loose in a February ice storm.
Two specs matter more than people expect. First, bulb count: 100 LEDs on a 4' x 6' net is a denser grid than the 70-bulb nets sold at big-box stores in the same footprint, and the difference is visible from the street. Second, the 5mm wide-angle lens with a concave tip throws color sideways as well as forward, which is what you want when the net is lying at an angle across the top of a shrub.
Sizing: Match The Net To The Plant, Not The Yard
Measure the plant, not the bed. For each shrub you want to light, take the width across the face and the height from the mulch line to the top. A 4' x 6' net covers a face roughly four feet wide and six feet of drape — enough to go over the top of most trimmed boxwoods, hollies, and foundation shrubs and reach the ground on both sides.
Use these three cases as your starting point:
- Small round shrubs, under 3' wide and 3' tall. One net per plant, draped over the crown, corners tucked at the base.
- Medium shrubs, 3' to 4' wide. One net per plant, oriented so the 6' dimension runs front to back over the top.
- Hedge runs. Divide the total hedge length by four feet and round up. A 14' hedge takes four nets. Overlap each net by a few inches at the seam rather than stretching to close a gap — a stretched net reads as a thin spot at night.
Tall or wide plants are where people underbuy. A 6' arborvitae is not a one-net plant; the face is narrow but the sides are deep, and it usually takes two nets set side by side with the seam at the back. For anything columnar and over six feet, string lights wrapped in vertical passes still look better than nets — a net can only conform so far before the grid distorts.
If you want to sanity-check the whole yard before you order, our Christmas light planner walks through rooflines, trees, bushes, and stakes in one pass.
Choosing A Style: Steady, Twinkle, Or Smooth Fade
All three styles share the same 4' x 6' net and 100-bulb grid. The difference is what the bulbs do after dark.
Steady is the default and the right call for most foundation beds. Warm white reads at 3000 Kelvin, cool white at 6400 Kelvin, and there are single colors — red, green, blue, gold, pink, purple, orange — plus two-color combinations like red with cool white or blue with cool white for people who want contrast without going full multicolor.
Twinkle nets put a portion of the bulbs on a fast on-off flicker. They read as movement from the sidewalk and get busy fast, so use them on one or two accent shrubs rather than the whole front of the house.
DreamSpark® smooth fade is the version to look at if you have seen the effect and want it on your bushes. Each bulb in a DreamSpark® net pulses gently on and off on its own rhythm, so the shrub looks like it is breathing rather than blinking. It is the same technology as the DreamSpark® light strings, and it is the reason a bed of four nets can hold attention on its own without a single yard display in front of it.
The ColorCraft® net lights are the multi-tone blends in the same smooth-fade family: Champagne mixes warm white, pure white, and cool white; Arctic mixes blue, cool white, and teal; Stardust mixes blue, purple, and teal. On a hedge, Champagne is the safe elegant choice and Arctic is the one that photographs like snow.
One dimming note, since it comes up: steady nets are dimmable. The smooth-fade nets can technically be dimmed, but the dimmer fights the fade circuit and the result is usually not what you want. Run those at full output.
Powering The Row
This is the part that separates a clean install from an extension cord nest. Each net is 12 watts, so power is rarely the constraint — the connection limit is. You can connect up to 18 nets end to end from a single starting point, which covers most residential front beds in one run.
Plan the run before you climb into the mulch:
- Pick the outlet first, then work outward in one direction. The 24" lead is short on purpose; it is meant to reach the next net, not the house.
- Bridge gaps with SPT zip cord rather than stringing nets across bare mulch. A short custom cord built from SPT wire and vampire plugs jumps a walkway without a visible orange cord, and building those cords takes about two minutes each.
- Weatherproof the joints. Every plug-to-plug connection sitting in mulch should get a gasket or cover. The accessories collection has the gasket and cover packs.
- Put the whole run on one control. A photocell timer turns the beds on at dusk and off on a schedule, which matters more with nets than with anything else because you are usually running four to twelve of them.
Installing Them So They Do Not Look Like Nets
A net light installed badly announces itself. Three habits fix that.
Drape from the top, center first. Set the middle of the net on the crown of the plant and let gravity pull the sides down. Do not pull the corners tight; a taut net flattens the plant's shape and you lose the depth that makes the bed look full.
Tuck, don't stake. Push the bottom corners in under the outer branches so the wire disappears. On windy sites, a couple of turns of green twist tie at the base holds everything without visible hardware.
Keep the seams at the back. When two nets meet on a wide plant, put the overlap on the side away from the street.
For the walk-through with photos and the wrapping variations, we walk through it in how to light bushes and shrubs with net lights.
What To Order For A Typical Front Yard
A common suburban front: two shrubs flanking the porch, a 12' hedge under the front windows, and two round boxwoods at the driveway. That is two nets for the flanking shrubs, three for the hedge, two for the boxwoods — seven nets, all in one connected run, roughly 84 watts total. In warm white steady, that is a clean, even foundation of light that makes a roofline look intentional instead of lonely. In Champagne smooth fade, it becomes the part of the display people actually stop for.
Nets are also the easiest thing in a display to add to later, which is why we suggest buying the size you need now and matching color codes exactly when you expand. Warm white from two different manufacturers rarely matches; warm white from the same line always does.
A Note On Timing
September is when the selection is complete. Final shipments land early to mid-September, and the middle of the month is when every color and style in the net line is on the shelf. Colors go uneven as the decorating season runs on, and net lights are the category where an exact color match matters most — you cannot hide a slightly bluer warm white in a row of five hedges. If your plan calls for seven Champagne nets, order seven now.
Ready to size your beds? Start with the net lights collection, and if you want a second opinion on color or count for your specific yard, our team answers that question every day at santa@thechristmaslightemporium.com.
