can leylandi conifers be cut lower without harming them

Go for it and good luck! We welly the neighbours hedge back every year :-) It might look a little scruffy the first year but you will gain light into your garden

id cut themto the floor and put something in more interesting lol

Well yes... absolutely!

i believe they can look nice in a massive garden and they are a quick fix but apart from that there a pain i think

I am the only one in my street with neighbours either side who have leylandi. Neither do anything with them and I HATE them with a passion. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
There isn't another house within miles that have them.

sods law i guess llew

When I moved to my present house the northern boundary of the garden consisted of well established leylandii. It certainly gave us privacy from the end of the cul-de-sac on the other side but I soon felt hemmed in by them. They formed an inpenetratable hedge as tall as the apex on the garage roof. So I got out the ladder and hand-saw and cut it down to just below the level of the five foot fences on either side. It looked hideous from the bedroom windows at first, solid green walls with a very woody centre, But the new growth gradually filled it in. In fact it did so well that I decided to hack back the garden side so that I could try to eradicate the ivy growing through it and to regain about two feet of garden. These measures horrified the neighbours but it is working, the new growth is filling in.
Leylandii are monsters but they can be tamed, in time,

better from the start to keep on top of them i feal