Editorial policy

Independence

Bulb & Bough earns money through affiliate commission. That is stated plainly on every commercial page and in full on the affiliate disclosure.

These are the rules that keep it from affecting what you read:

• Commission rate is never an input to a ranking. We do not check what a product pays before deciding where it goes on a page, and we do not reorder lists to favor higher-paying items.
• Buyer-first beats commission, always. If the cheaper option is the right one for a given reader, the page says so. Several pages on this site recommend spending less than you were planning to, and a few recommend buying nothing.
• No paid placement. No manufacturer, retailer or agency can buy a position on this site, a review, or a mention. Nobody has ever paid for one.
• No sponsored content. There is none on this site, and if that ever changes it will be labeled unmistakably at the top of the page.
• No free product influences a pick. We have not been sent products, and if we ever are, that fact will be disclosed on the page in question.

What we will not publish

This list is short and it is absolute.

• Test results we did not produce. No wind ratings, temperature tolerances, durability figures or exposure results presented as ours. See our methodology.
• Unattributed statistics. Any figure of the form “X percent of homeowners…” gets a named, linked source or it does not get published.
• Reviews, ratings or testimonials we did not collect. There are no customer testimonials on this site because we have no verified ones. A clean page beats a fabricated one, and this is not a close call.
• Prices we cannot verify. We never write a price into body text. Prices come from live retailer data with a capture date, or the page says “check price”.
• Invented product identifiers. We do not publish a product code or a direct product link we have not verified. Where we have no verified identifier, links go to a retailer search for the real product name.
• Fake urgency. No countdowns, no “only 3 left”, no manufactured scarcity. Christmas lights go on sale every January.
• Credentials we do not hold. Nobody here is presented as an electrician, a licensed installer or a certified anything.

Sourcing standards

Every number on this site should be traceable. In practice that means:

• Product specifications — the manufacturer’s own listing or documentation, linked in the sources section of the page.
• Electrical conventions — named in the text, with the arithmetic shown so you can check it rather than trust it. The 80 percent continuous-load figure used throughout this site is worked through on how many lights on one circuit.
• Safety claims — a cited standard or manufacturer guidance, never asserted bare.
• Rules of thumb — stated as conventions with the reasoning shown, not presented as measured facts. One bulb per foot at 12-inch spacing is a planning convention, and we say so.

Safety content

Outdoor lighting involves ladders and electricity. Where this site covers either, the editorial rule is the same: describe the practice, state the limit, and name the point at which it becomes a job for a qualified person.

We will not publish a workaround for a genuine electrical fault, and we will not encourage anyone onto a roof. Where the honest answer is “do not light that section”, the page says that.

Corrections

We make mistakes, specifications change, and products get discontinued. When we find an error or one is reported to us:

1. The page is corrected as soon as we can confirm the right answer.
2. The “last updated” date on the page is changed, so the fact that something changed is visible.
3. Where a correction reverses a recommendation rather than adjusting a detail, we say so on the page rather than quietly rewriting it.

Report anything wrong to mike@blackironathletics.com or through the contact page. We would rather be corrected than be wrong quietly.

Updates

Roundups and comparisons are reviewed ahead of each season and whenever a product in them is discontinued or changed. Guides are reviewed when the underlying facts change. Every page carries a published date and an updated date, and the updated date means what it says — it moves when the content changes, not on every deploy.