Once a year, a building gets to become the reason people cross town. Lunar Telephone Company designs holiday light shows and seasonal spectaculars that stop foot traffic, flood social feeds, and turn a facade, a garden, or an atrium into a destination - the kind of annual tradition guests plan around and press writes about.
Holiday & Seasonal Lighting Spectaculars
What a spectacular can be
Every property and every season deserves its own answer, and we design the full range: animated facade light shows synchronized to music; media-driven building projections; holiday light trails and garden illuminations that turn an evening stroll into a ticketed event; tree lightings and plaza moments built for the press photo; and retail flagship spectaculars engineered to stop a sidewalk. If it glows, twinkles, or makes a crowd pull out their phones, it's in our wheelhouse.
One thing we're not: an installation company. We're the design studio — concept, engineering, content, and programming — and we partner with the country's best fabricators and installers to put it in the air. If you already have an install crew you love, we play beautifully with them.
Questions we hear every year
When should we start planning a holiday light show?
- For a major facade show: 9–12 months out
- For a campus-wide spectacular: 9-24 months out
- For a focused single-statement moment: a well-run summer start still makes the season.
- If you're reading this in August wondering if it's too late for this year: ask. Sometimes the answer is a very enthusiastic yes.
Procurement and fabrication takes longer than anyone expects. The other, bigger schedule buster - the best installers, integrators, programmers, and content creators fill their calendar early.
What does a holiday spectacular cost?
Less than you'd guess for a moment that defines your property all season, more than string lights from a big-box store. We build transparent budgets from the first conversation, shaped by scale, media, and how much of the show returns next year.
Can the show come back every year?
That's the smart play — we design for annual reuse and refresh, so year two costs a fraction of year one and the tradition compounds.
Do you handle music, animation, and content too?
Yes! (or no!)
Synchronized light shows, animation, and media content are designed in-house and we have some trusted go-to collaborators for music licensing, arrangements, composition, and recording. However, if you’ve got folks you like working with them… we’re probably going to like working with them, too!
The date doesn't move, and neither do we. A holiday show has the least forgiving deadline in entertainment. The calendar is the client. We build schedules backward from opening night and have never met a countdown we didn't like. (We're a space-themed company. Countdowns are kind of our thing.)
Spectacle that earns its budget. A great seasonal show isn't decoration; it's a media moment, a traffic driver, and a brand asset that returns every year. We design with the photo in mind — the one your guests take and your marketing team reuses all season.
Installed while the city sleeps. Flagship retail and busy properties can't close for load-in. We design for overnight installation and daytime invisibility — cranes gone by morning, doors open on time.
Weatherproof, guest-proof, season-proof. Snow, rain, wind, and months of continuous operation.
We're on the mission the whole way. Concept workshops, documentation, fabrication coordination, on-site programming, and the phone call three months later. Same crew, start to finish. We don't design it and drift off into orbit.
What it's like to work with us
Our seasonal work includes the Saks Fifth Avenue holiday facade in New York — Theater of Dreams, Winter Palace on Fifth, and the Wheel of Dreams with DIOR — one of the most photographed holiday moments on Earth; JOY and Christmas on the Potomac at Gaylord National; and NightGarden Miami at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
Work like this has earned recognition from the Illuminating Engineering Society and LiveDesign — and, more importantly, the crowds come back every year.
The flight log
Whether you're a brand or property team planning next season's moment, a resort building a tradition, or a garden ready to glow after dark - the best seasonal shows are designed earlier than you think. Tell us what you're building. Moonshots welcome. That's kinda the point.
Ready for launch?
