BOJANGLES and Ener-Chi have been crowned as the joint winners of this year's Best Dressed Window competition.

The two local businesses were presented with their trophies by Town Mayor Cllr Martin Turner after he judged all the entries earlier this week.

Amorio Cosmetics was also presented with a prize for second place.

The competition was organised by Penarth Town Council to get local residents in a festive mood in the build-up to Christmas.

The council praised the excellent response and impressive displays of traders from across the town.

Cathy Evans and Caroline and Judy, the owners of Bojangles and Ener-Chi, will now have the honour of switching on the lights at next year's Penarth Christmas Festival.

Cathy Evans explained her window theme by saying: “I wanted it to look like Christmas morning when the children get up and all of the gifts are around the fireplace. I went for a really traditional look. This is my first year with the gift shop so I’m absolutely delighted to have won. I’m very proud.”

Ener-chi’s window was a more modern take on Christmas and used a lot of white and sparkle.

Owners Caroline and Judy said: “The theme is ‘Season of Magic’. We try to create our displays without cost, so the branches you see are from our gardens and have been painted, we made all of the snowflakes ourselves and always try to use recycled materials where possible.

"We try to do one of our windows quite white and elegant to appeal to adults and tend to aim the second window at children and make it more colourful."

Jess Carmel from Amorio started in the pop-up Christmas market shop on Glebe Street last year, so is celebrating her first Christmas in her own shop with an impressive runner-up display.

Jess said: “As the shop is monochrome, I wanted to keep it simple so it draws the eye inside. My mum helped with all the lights and I was so excited to be the runner-up I couldn’t wait to tell her. Penarth is getting nicer every year.”

All of the windows chosen are very different but all really set the bar high for the town.

In creating the contest Penarth Town Council are hoping that eventually all of the traders will join in and really put Penarth on the map as a Christmas shopping destination.

Penarth Town Mayor Councillor Martin Turner, who judged the competition, said: "We are very much looking forward to seeing what next year’s completion brings and would like to see as many people as possible involved. We’d like to congratulate all the participants and the winners, Bojangles, Ener-chi and Amorio. They’ve all clearly spent a lot of time and effort on their windows and it was very rewarding to walk around the town and see the efforts made to make Penarth look special for Christmas."