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London guide
Christmas lights in London: where to photograph them, and when
From the middle of November the city does the lighting for you. Whole streets turn warm and gold, and for about six weeks London is the easiest it ever is to photograph. It is also the busiest, and the window of light that actually works is shorter than most people expect.
By Anatoly, co-founder and editor · Routes and timings from Natalia’s London sessions · Updated
This is how we shoot it: where the lights are worth the walk, the forty minutes that matter, and how to come home with a photo of the two of you rather than of the back of somebody’s head.
Part of our London photo guide: London photo spots, the 14 places we use.
The window that matters is forty minutes long
Once the clocks go back at the end of October, the sun is gone before half past four. By the middle of December it sets just before four. That sounds like a problem and it is the opposite: the good light arrives while the shops are still open and everyone is still out.
The frames people picture when they say “Christmas lights” are almost always taken in the half hour after sunset. The sky is still deep blue rather than black, and it sits at roughly the same brightness as the lights themselves, so faces and background can both be exposed properly. Wait another twenty minutes and the sky goes flat black, the lights blow out, and the whole thing turns into a snapshot.
So the rule for a December session: be standing at the first spot fifteen minutes before sunset, not at seven in the evening. We plan the route backwards from that. There is more on the London light calendar in our guide to the best time of day to take photos in London.
Where the lights are worth the walk
Switch-on dates move every year. Regent Street and Oxford Street usually go first, in the first half of November, Covent Garden follows a week or two later, and the Trafalgar Square tree is lit at a ceremony in early December. Most of it stays up until the first week of January.
Regent Street
The angels: enormous lit figures strung the length of the street, and the only display in London with real scale to it. The curve of the street pulls them into a line behind you. Shoot from the middle of the crossings, or from the top deck of a bus if the pavement is impossible.
Best time: Weekday, right at sunset. It is a main shopping street, so it does not get quieter later.
Carnaby Street
A different theme every year, hung low across a narrow pedestrian street, which is exactly what you want: the colour lands on faces instead of thirty feet above them. The most reliable place in London for a warm, close, obviously-Christmas frame.
Best time: Straight after Regent Street, five minutes’ walk. Before 5pm on a weekday.
Covent Garden
The big tree in the Piazza and the giant baubles under the Market Building roof. The covered part is lit well enough to shoot after dark, which makes it the one spot on this list that still works at seven in the evening when everywhere else has gone black.
Best time: Late afternoon for the Piazza, any time for the Market Building.
Seven Dials
Two minutes from Covent Garden and half as busy. Lights strung across the junction of seven small streets, with the sundial pillar in the middle. Good for wide frames where the two of you are small and the street does the work.
Best time: Just after sunset, midweek.
Leadenhall Market
A Victorian covered arcade in the City: painted green and burgundy, glass roof, one enormous tree. Because it sits in the financial district it empties out at weekends, which makes it the only Christmas spot in London that is genuinely quiet on a Sunday.
Best time: Sunday, any time. On weekdays it fills with the after-work crowd from about five.
Mayfair: Burlington Arcade, Bond Street and Berkeley Square
The most elaborate façades in London are here, including the one on Berkeley Square that gets rebuilt every year and draws a queue of its own. Burlington Arcade is covered, warm and much calmer than the street outside.
Best time: Blue hour for the façades. Arrive at the square early; the queue to be photographed in front of it is real.
Harrods and Knightsbridge
The whole building is outlined in light, so it reads from across the road. This is a wide, architectural frame rather than an intimate one, and it is worth it if you want one big postcard shot in the set.
Best time: The first twenty minutes after sunset, from the opposite pavement.
Trafalgar Square
The tree is a gift from the city of Oslo, sent every year since 1947, and it is a plain spruce with plain white lights, no baubles. It photographs better than it sounds, especially with St Martin-in-the-Fields behind it.
Best time: Early December onwards, after the switch-on. Weeknights.
Kew Gardens
Christmas at Kew is a ticketed after-dark trail through the gardens, and it is a different kind of evening altogether: tunnels of light, mirrored installations, no traffic. Book it as its own outing rather than squeezing it into a West End route.
Best time: Whatever slot you can book. The earliest entry has the least traffic on the path.
Two routes that fit into one evening
The West End hour
Carnaby Street at sunset, Regent Street as the sky turns, then down through Seven Dials to Covent Garden as it goes dark. Twenty minutes of walking in total, four distinct backdrops, and a covered market at the end for when the sky has stopped helping.
The quiet hour
Burlington Arcade, along Bond Street, then Berkeley Square. Fewer people than the West End, more architecture, and every stop within a few minutes of the last. Good for anyone who would rather not be photographed in a crowd.
Both are one-hour sessions. If you want the lights and the river, that is a two-hour booking: see what each length includes.
What to wear under Christmas lights
The lights are warm and orange, and they land on everything. Deep colours hold up best: black, camel, burgundy, forest green, navy. A red coat in front of Carnaby Street is a cliché for a good reason, and it works.
Pure white turns amber under these lights and cool grey turns muddy. Big logos and busy prints fight with an already busy background. And it is properly cold standing still, so a coat you are happy to be photographed in beats five layers you will want to take off, and pockets are more use than a handbag.
Practical notes
Questions we get asked every December
Book a London Christmas session
Tell us when you’re in London and we will come back with a route, a start time built around sunset and the price in the same message. Sessions start at £150.
