This is the most important page on Wreath & Watt, because everything else depends on it. If you are going to trust a figure on any of the other 41 pages here, you should first know exactly where it came from — and, more importantly, what we did not do to get it.
1. What we do
Four things, and only these four:
- We compile published manufacturer specifications. Wire gauge, bulb spacing, ingress ratings, branch tip counts, container dimensions, published capacities, ANSI ratings where they exist. These are read from the manufacturer’s own listing and quoted, not paraphrased. Across the site we have compiled specifications for 97 products.
- We compute the arithmetic and show the working. Load, capacity, cost to run, tips per foot, feet per reel, drops per foot. Every calculation on this site is printed step by step so you can check it. If you cannot reproduce a number from what is on the page, that is a bug and we want to hear about it.
- We track live prices. Prices render only from a live price layer. They are never typed into copy, never rounded, and never remembered from a previous visit.
- We re-check. Quarterly for product rankings, and always in August before the season. Annually for the ledger guides, because the physics does not move but products and energy rates do.
2. What we do not do
This list is not modesty. It is the specification of what our figures are worth.
- We do not test products. No lab, no test rig, no long-term durability trial. Nothing on this site is based on our having used a product.
- We do not own the products we write about. There is no shelf of samples here.
- We do not accept free products. None have been offered and none would be accepted, because a product we were given is a product we would have to disclose on every page it appeared on, forever.
- We do not sell placements. No manufacturer has ever paid to appear here, in any position, and none can.
- We do not republish Amazon star ratings as our own evaluation. Borrowed authority is still borrowed. If a rating ever appears here it will be labeled as the retailer’s, sourced live, and never typed into copy.
3. How picks are chosen
Every ranked page publishes its scoring criteria, and the criteria are always the same ones the tables actually display. There is no hidden weighting and no editorial thumb on the scale.
| Category | What we score |
|---|---|
| Lighting | Build (wire gauge), weather tolerance (published rating), serviceability, published specs |
| Storage | Published capacity or dimensions, structure under load, handling, stated size limits |
| Trees, wreaths, garland | Published tip count, density per foot, light provision, spec completeness |
| Halloween | Published specs, street presence at published height, build, setup effort |
| Fall and summer | Published dimensions, weather tolerance, storage friendliness, materials |
Each product's individual scores are printed on its card, out of ten, so you can disagree with a specific line rather than with the total.
Source: Our own published rubric.
The overall score is the arithmetic mean of those component scores, rounded to one decimal. It is computed in code from the component scores rather than typed in, so a published total always matches the published parts.
Every ranked page carries at least one “skip this” pick, with a stated reason. A list where everything is recommended is an advertisement.
4. Where the numbers come from
- Manufacturer specifications and listings. Cited per page, with the ASIN of the listing they came from and the date we read it.
- Published electrical conventions. Watts equal volts times amps. The 80 percent continuous-load convention for anything running three hours or more. Standard lamp ratings for C7, C9 and mini strings. These are stated as conventions, not as measurements we made.
- Our own arithmetic, shown. Any figure we derived is labeled as ours and the calculation is printed beside it.
- Our own stated guidance. A few rules of thumb are ours — the two-thirds wreath-to-door proportion, the one-third garland swag allowance, the tips-per-foot bands. Each is labeled as our guidance rather than dressed up as an industry standard, so you can disagree with it.
5. What we could not verify
Where a manufacturer does not publish something, the page says “Not published by the manufacturer” in those words. We do not interpolate from a similar product, carry a figure across models, or estimate.
There are several of these gaps and they are consistent across the category. No Halloween inflatable publishes its blower wattage. No Halloween projector publishes an ANSI lumen figure. Very few holiday light sets publish a kelvin figure or a per-string wattage. Most storage containers publish a capacity but not their internal dimensions. Where those gaps exist we say so, and where possible we give you a method for finding the number yourself.
6. Prices
Prices render only from the live price layer, and only while they are fresh. A price older than 48 hours is not shown at all — the cell falls back to “Check price” instead. A stale number is worse than no number, because it looks like information.
Every price carries the date it was checked. No price is ever quoted in prose, because prose does not update.
8. How we are paid
Wreath & Watt earns a commission when you buy through the Amazon links on this site. It costs you nothing and it does not change the ranking — the scores are computed from published specifications before any commission is considered, and the commission rate is identical across everything we link to, so there is nothing to be biased toward.
Where a product is not on Amazon — Balsam Hill, King of Christmas, Trimlight — we name it anyway, with no buy button and an explicit note that we earn nothing there. Full detail on the affiliate disclosure page.
9. Corrections
If a number here is wrong, we want to fix it, and we would rather hear it from you than leave it up. Email info@wreathandwatt.com or use the contact form.
A corrected page gets an updated “last checked” date and, where a recommendation changed, a one-line note saying what changed and why. Silent edits would erode the only asset this site has. The full policy is on the editorial policy page.