About Bulb & Bough

What this site is

Bulb & Bough covers the outdoor Christmas display as a job rather than as a shopping category. The six sections follow the order the decisions actually arrive in — plan it, choose the lights, mount them, power them, add the display pieces, put it away — because that is how the project happens and it is not how the rest of the internet is organized.

There are 73 pages here covering planning arithmetic, clip selection by roof type, circuit capacity, inflatable anchoring, storage and everything between. Each one exists because it answers a question people actually search for, not to fill a category.

Who publishes it

Bulb & Bough is published by Iron Mako Media, an independent publisher. The site is written and run by Mike M., the hands-on owner behind Iron Mako Media.

That is the whole author biography, and it is deliberately short. We are not going to attach invented credentials to it — no years of experience we have not stated, no trade certifications, no claim to be a licensed electrician or a professional installer. Where this site gives advice that touches electrical work, it points you to a qualified electrician rather than pretending to be one.

What we do and do not claim

This is the part most gear sites skip, so it goes near the top here. We have not bought, installed and weather-tested every product we recommend. We do not have a wind tunnel, a temperature chamber or a test roof, and we are not going to publish figures as though we do.

What we actually do is set out in full on the methodology page. In short:

• Specifications come from the manufacturer, linked so you can check them. Where a manufacturer does not publish a figure, we say that rather than estimating one.
• Our scores are editorial judgment, based on published specs, current listings and buyer feedback read in full. They are never marked up as aggregated user ratings, because they are not.
• We publish no prices we cannot verify. Every buy button goes to the current retail listing, where the live price is.
• There are no testimonials on this site, because we have no verified customer reviews to publish. A clean page beats a fabricated one.

A category full of unverifiable claims — 50 mph wind ratings nobody measured, percentages with no source — is exactly why we decided that being checkable is more useful than sounding authoritative.

What this site does not cover

• Indoor Christmas decorating. Trees, mantels, indoor garland — all out of scope. This is an outdoor site.
• Party and event inflatables. Bounce houses and rental equipment are a different industry.
• General landscape lighting. Year-round path and garden lighting is a different purchase with different products. The one exception is permanent holiday lighting, which is genuinely part of this decision.
• Electrical work. We cover load arithmetic and what the numbers mean. We do not cover wiring, and where a problem needs an electrician we say so.

How the site is funded

Through affiliate links. Bulb & Bough is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, and when you buy through a link here we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Commission does not decide what we recommend or the order we rank it in. If the cheaper option is the right one, that is what the page says — and several pages here recommend spending less, or nothing. The full terms are on the affiliate disclosure page and our independence rules are in the editorial policy.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we want to know. Specifications change, products get discontinued and we make mistakes like anyone else. Corrections are made on the page and the updated date is changed so you can see it happened.

Email mike@blackironathletics.com or use the contact page.