If you want to give you holiday lighting display a professional look, this article will help teach you how.
First lets talk about the differences in appearance of the “do it
yourself” display compared to the professional one. There are three main
differences:
1. Where the lights are actually place.
2. The way the lights are attached and presented.
3. The actual kind of lights used.
I am going to address these three main differences and tell you, the
do it yourselfer, how to accomplish the professional look while keeping
the do it yourself pricing.
First lets address where to put your lighting display. For most people
the front of you house is going to get the most exposure, the trick is
making the entire front side of you home look like it is fully decorated
with the least amount of work and lights.
Fascia and trees is often the best way to accomplish this. Where your
house meets the roof is called the fascia. Now you may be thinking the
fascia and trees? That seems like the most difficult and dangerous place
to put the lights, which is the beauty of it, most people will think
that and assume you paid a company to install the Christmas light
display.
First let cover trees, not every tree is actually easy and doable for
the do it yourselfer, although with the right tools you may be surprised
how easy it can be. If you have a tree that isn’t touching anything
like other trees or you house, and the ground around the tree is
relatively flat and easy to walk on you may be in luck. What you are
going to do is install all the lights on the tree with both fee on the
ground, not in the tree and not on a ladder. Trees that do not lose
their leaves like evergreens and blue spruces usually work best with
this installation method, but trees that loose their leaves will work as
well. The trick is using a very long and light telescoping pole. Copy
paste the link below this article or click here to see the ideal pole to
use. This is the ideal pole because it only $34 and because it’s a
lightweight pole. The lighter and longer the pole the better, pool
cleaning poles work great if you live in a place where pools are common,
if not hardware store carry telescoping poles. At one end of the pole
you need to duct tape a stake or something that is 1-3 feet in length (I
use a painting stir stick). You want to form and X with the extension
pole and the object you tape to it. This X creates two V’s the top V is
used to hook and push Christmas light line up while the bottom V is used
to hook line and pull it down. You can start at the top or bottom of a
tree and work your way around the tree using the extension pole to place
the lights in the tree. You can do all this from the ground on a tree
about 15-18 feet tall without having to rent an expensive boom lift and
without dealing with the dangers of a ladder. You simply walk around the
tree in a circular motion using you pole to place the light in the
tree. I like to plug in the lights and make sure they work and continue
to work while I am installing them. I like to use a long extension cord
and tape the connection of the extension cord to the lights. I then use
the top of my X on the pole to raise up the extension cord and lights
(where they are taped together) and place that up on the top of the
tree, then I grab the Christmas light line about 5-10 feet from where it
is taped to the extension cord and start walking around the tree
loosely wrapping the lights around it. Just repeat this process and work
your way around the tree. The lights on the Christmas light line will
make the X on the pole stick to the line. For trees I like to use mini
lights (same ones you would use on a Christmas tree in your living
room). If you are connecting multiple Christmas light lines I recommend
tapping them together using electrical tape to ensure they don’t get
disconnected while installing, it also really helps when removing the
lights. While installing the Christmas lights make sure to stop and back
away from the tree and make sure the spacing between rotations around
the tree look uniform. About 8-12 times around a 12-20 foot tree looks
great. The reason I like to start at the top is I feel it is a little
easier to get the lights out of the tree when you take them down because
you can pull on the extension cord and Christmas light line at the same
time, if you walk back far enough from the tree with both the Christmas
light line and extension cord in you hand it usually comes out without
any snags.
Okay now that we have the Christmas lights place in your tree’s as if
someone in a boom lift put them there let focus on the house. Since the
fascia runs along the entire length of your house placing lights here is
the most common way to get a full lit appearance. Now not every house
will have the fascia that is easy to install and what really matters is
how steep you roof is. Anytime you are working on a roof it can be
dangerous. So if you are not comfortable on your roof maybe you should
stick to the trees, outlining your driveway, doors, and porch if you
have one. However roofs that are easy to walk on and not very steep are
actually pretty common. Make sure you are wearing shoes with good grip
and ankle support. A lot of people assume that when the fascia of a home
has Christmas lights that someone attached all of them by ladder, but
actually you can use a ladder to get on the roof and then just walk on
your roof, turning a all day project into a 30 minute project.
An easy give away to the do it yourselfer is how the lights are
attached to the fascia. The way the professionals do it which is
actually an easy and less invasive way is they attach each individual
bulb to the fascia using a clip. Instead of attaching the line they
actually attach the bulb (or socket to the bulb). This has 2 main
advantages, one it give a straight-line appearance and especially at
night it appears there is no slack in the line. The other thing it does
is it gives a uniform look, by having each bulb face a specific way as
well as having equal spacing apart. The best Christmas lights for fascia
are C9 bulbs that have 12 inch spacing. You can do more than 12 inch
spacing like 6 inch, but that means you will have twice as many
connections points creating a lot more work. If you do any longer than
12 inch spacing in my opinion the gap between bulbs starts to look to
big, this is why 12 inch is my favorite, and often the most common
spacing for fascia lights. The type of clip you use is also a crucial
step for 2 reason, the first is the right clip makes it easy to attach
and remove to gutters or wood fascia, second the right clip makes all
the bulbs face one way. Click here or the link below to see the clips I
like to use, it is called the all-in-one-clip, there are many difference
types and variations to this clip, in my opinion using one like my
example will save you time on installation and removal as well as make
your display look better.
Lastly the type of lights commonly found in a professional display are
customizable, meaning that they can be made and/or cut to specific
lengths to match the dimensions of your home. If you go to one of the
big box stores they will sell light strings at various lengths. As
mentioned before for the house it is best to get the C9 lights with 12
inch or smaller spacing. LED lights are great because they last, are
more durable, and use less power. Unfortunate if you cut a Christmas
light line from a big box store that is a LED strand a bunch of lights
will go out (if not the whole strand). So to get that appearance of
having professional lights be the exact length with no excess gets a bit
tricky. Obviously the easiest way to do that is to just use the same
lights the professional installation company’s use. We order our lights
from noveltylights.com if you would like to explore that option, you
will find this is quite expensive, each C9 LED light bulb is a $1.00 or
more a bulb, where the big box store will sell them pre assembled for
much less. For the sake of keeping this article short I won’t get into
all the reason why the commercial grade lights are so much more
expensive other than they are just a higher quality. I did say that I
would explain to you how to give a professional look at do it your self
prices, so lets stick with purchasing the cost effective big box store
LED lights. You want to make sure your lights are longer than needed so
that you don’t come up short and have missing spots. If you measure the
fascia of your home and add 25% you should have the length needed to
make up for slack in the line and having extra so your not short and
missing spots. You also need to account for power so you will need line
or extension cord from the power outlet to the start of the lights, also
if you have fascia that is not continuous you need to connect power
from one ending spot to the next starting spot. So place your lights on
the fascia and attached each bulb with a clip when you get to the end
and have excess you are going to turn those bulbs off and use the unlit
line as an extension cord to connect power to the next starting spot, or
if it is the ending spot you are going to still turn of the bulbs and
roll up the rest of the line into a ball, tape, tie, or zip tie the ball
together to itself, then simply hide that ball if possible. Even if you
can’t hide the ball at night you won’t see it because its dark and all
you see is the lights. On the roof or behind a downspout on the side of
the house is usually where I will hide the ball if I can. Okay so now
how to turn off the bulbs you don’t want on. There are two different
kinds of LED light strands you can buy, one will advertise if one bulb
goes out the rest stay on (little more expensive) the other type will
not. If you not sure what type you have its easy to find out simply
unscrew or pop off the plastic bulb part of the light exposing the LED
diode. Remove the diode while the lights are plugged in and see what
happens if just that just that bulb goes out you have the lights that
stay on when one goes out. In this case you simply remove all the diodes
on the part of the strand you do not want the lights on, however I have
worked with lights that after you remove 3-5 in a row a bunch of the
lights go out. If this happens you can use the second method I am about
to cover just instead of removing 1 bulb you will need to remove 3-5, or
you can just use the electrical tape method which is instead of
removing the diode that will make a bunch go out simply tape over the
diode with the electrical tape so no light shines through. Weather you
tape the bulb with electrical tape or remove the diode make sure you
place the diode back into the bulb (not in the socket) then pop or screw
the bulb back in. This way you don’t loose any part and for future use,
water won’t get into the socket and cause a short, and in the daytime
it looks better too (in my opinion). Okay so if you remove the bulb and a
bunch of lights go out you have the regular type of LED Christmas
lights. In the line your going to look for plastic enclosure that holds a
resistor. It looks like a bump in the line, the way LED lights work is
they need a specific low power to work and the raw 120 volt power that
comes out of the outlet is to much, so what they do it place resistors
in the line which reduce the power to match the exact amount of power it
takes to turn the LED diode on. If you give the LED to little or to
much power it wont turn on which is why when you remove one bulb all the
bulbs in the series between the two resistors will go out. So most
lights have 5-10 lights in-between each resistor. So a 60 foot sting of
lights may have 10 resistors in the stand and you have 10 sections you
can turn off by simply removing one LED diode within that section. So
lets say you get to the end of the fascia and you pull out the next
light and then a section of the lights goes out, but now the lighted
line is too short. What you need to do is after you get to the end
follow the line until you get to the next resistor then pull out the
bulb 1st bulb after the resistor and the lights in that section will go
out. If there are more section further down the line that need to be off
just repeat this until they are all off. In our example there are 6
bulbs per sections so let say that there are not 3 extra bulbs that are
on making the line too long. You will do the electrical tape method to
turn off those 3 bulbs so you line is the exact length it needs to be.
That is how to install Christmas lights yourself while giving the appearance of commercial grade professionally installed lights. If this seems like too much work, too complicated, or you would rather just have someone else deal with creating a beautiful holiday lighting display for you this year, please give us a call. If you live in Northern Colorado and want a free Christmas light installation estimate don’t hesitate to contact us.
Ideal extension pole – https://www.amazon.com/Telescopic-Extension-Reach-Aluminum-weight/dp/B07DY7VJTG/ref=sr_1_cc_8?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1530930484&sr=1-8-catcorr&keywords=20+foot+extension+pole
All-in-one Christmas light Clip – https://www.amazon.com/Novelty-Lights-Christmas-Shingle-Gutter/dp/B004TNDB2I/ref=sr_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1530933596&sr=1-2&keywords=all-in-one+christmas+light+clips