Neighbours opposite with flashy blue Christmas lughts

[Mooey89]

Draping Icicles dangling from their roof, bright blue, and flashing. 24. Hours. A. Day.
I don’t care during the day, I don’t care too much in the evening... but when it’s the middle of the night and you think there is a constant police car outside it is starting to grate on me!!!!!!!

AIBAS (Am I being a Scrooge) to ask them to turn them off when they go to bed?!

MrsShadenfraud

YANBU every day when I get home from work in December I think it has been a "major incident" in my road with all the flashing blue lights. Hate it.

Drape a few towels over your curtain rail. Tape some bin liners to the glass. Or cardboard. Heck just move your wardrobe in front of the window. Or an eye mask?

Actually I like honey ravioli's suggestion the most.

Get yourself an eye sleep mask not expensive, and good for preventing wrinkles.

Eye masks and ask them.to turn the lights off, they could affect people driving, people with epilepsy.

Oh, hang on, you mean people with epilepsy should wear eye masks when driving. Sorry, I get it now.

We do the outside of our house and garden up every year, but they're always switched off around 9pm. Really dont get why someone would leave them on all night, completely pointless.

I've just put up some battery operated lights today, and hope that I"m not disturbing anyone with them. They go for 8 hours then off for 16 then back on automatically for 8 hours.

What I hate is the flashing. I want them set on steadily-on, but every time they come on automatically, they're back to the sequence of 8 flashing programmes. grrr The strobe ones or the ones that look like emergency lights or video games etc are the ones that annoy me. Just twinkling I could cope with. But I can't seem to make it set so that they are always on without flashing! Luckily not very near any neighbours, though i'd turn them off if anyone mentioned it.

But I wish I knew how to make them not flash, other than going out to fix it each time they come on.

Many years ago I cut the wires of the flashing lights on a neighbours house. When they replaced them another neighbour did it again.

Honeyravioli - I salute you 👏👏👏

I would talk to them although maybe just in a how much electricity that must be costing, have you considered... kind of way. OH would find a way of blocking out the light e.g. hang a blanket or something. Check the reduced bits in places like B&Q for reduced curtains, we got ours for a steal.

Our neighbours have the same approach to house decoration - blue icicle lights hanging from their porch and guttering which flash constantly. Every time I go to the kitchen I think it's the police out there, and our epileptic dog spends half the festive season with the twitches. Merry bloody Christmas.

blue flashing Christmas lights? You must all be living in chivy neighbourhoods

Around here it's all tasteful warm yellow mellow shine.

Ha wasonthelist cross posted with you - they really do seem to affect our dogs epilepsy, but then most things do. Any form of excitement, car journeys, visitors, female dogs, changes to routine, walks outside, baths, haircuts, the vets, even the neighbours flashy lights and off he goes...

He's pretty sensitive

Why wouldn’t you just ask them or pop a note through the door? Just mention that it’s disturbing you at night, they probably haven’t even realised

As a plan of last resort, you could put aluminium foil on your windows and this should make them "black out".

You need a roll or two of tin foil, scissors, a damp cloth/sponge and a dry cloth/sponge.

Cut a piece of tin foil so it is about 3 or 4cm longer than your window. Use the wet sponge to wet the glass (on the inside). Then stick the foil to it. Use the dry cloth to smooth it out and into the corners so you get good contact all over. If the foil is not wide enough, just do the same with a second piece and have the two piece overlapping a bit (wet the first piece of foil so the second piece also sticks to it). You need the foil to go around the side of the frame a bit to make sure it is properly blacked out.

This should stay in place for ages (I took mine down after a year). If it starts coming away in places, just use a damp sponge again.

Just to warn you, if you do end up leaving it up for a long time (by that I mean over six months), it can leave strange marks on your window. I got rid of those with a glass scraper and sticker remover solvent (Amazon).

I would just ask your neighbours if they would mind turning the lights off at night though!

Our neighbour is currently in the midst of decorating his house with the 50 million flashing lights again, he adds to it every year. The blue flashing icicles don't irritate me half as much as the flaming Santa who seemingly climbs a ladder by lights going on and off in turn. They currently have four fully festooned trees on the postage sized front garden but we are only on day three of decorating so there will be more no doubt and he's never happy until it looks an eyesore.He leaves them on all night as well.
The thing I find most bizarre is that when they had dc at home there were no lights on the house but now there is just him and the wife it's lit up like Blackpool illuminations.

My next door neigbour has one of those god awful circular projector things which makes a swirly, moving pattern on the house. Their house sticks out like a sore thumb because it's the only decorated one in the street. Thankfully when I'm inside, I can't see it.

Oh I saw those advertised Lunas. JML I think. Looked terrible.

I'd move to a back bedroom if you have one. Feck the kids out into the great blue yonder.

Other than that get a sleeping mask. They are brilliant.

Sleep mask! And tell them you have epilepsy so please can they turn them off at night.

Lunas our neighbour has one of them too, hideous. Theirs is the only house on the street decorated as well and stands out like a sore thumb. I hate having decorations up anyway so couldn't bear to have them all over the house and outside as well.

Electric bills must be no problem in that house!

I would politely ask them to turn the lights off as they go to bed (if they ever do that is!), as it's keeping you awake.

Any reasonable person would understand. But maybe we are not talking rational here. Who knows. Worth a try.

If no joy, back to swapping front for back rooms and/or getting a sleep mask.

Across the road have also done this. DD2 was ill over the weekend and NHS Direct said they would send an ambulance. DH and I went out at least three times (including running down the stairs) assuming the ambulance had arrived only to realise it was the flipping lights.

What a waste of electricity too. Contact the local council.

Apart from the practical measures to block the light, I'd feel compelled to do the following

1. stick a picture of Krampus on the window that looks towards theirs
2. put much brighter flashier lights in the same place as soon as they take theirs down in Jan.

We have a large street lamp directly outside our bedroom window, a cheap black-out roller blind solved the problem.