There is nothing like a beautifully lit and decorated home to get you in the Christmas spirit. But, let’s be real for a minute: the part leading up to a fully decorated home is hard work! You have to pull out a ladder, climb up and down the house, nail or staple rows upon rows of lights, and then get everything working right.
We can’t help you cut all of the work out of decorating, but we can offer up some tips to help things along. First, you should verify that your roof is in good condition, or you may run into complications during the holidays like leaks, rotting and breaking wood, peeling paint, and more. If your roof is in good shape, the work is half done! Here are some tips on how to choose Christmas lights to help make your roof decorating endeavors a little more manageable.
Choosing Lights
If you want to light up your house, there are a few shortcuts you can take so that the stringing job isn’t a nightmare. You can also avoid burning a hole in your wallet with an enormous electricity bill if you play your cards right. With a couple of tips on how to choose Christmas lights, you can make your house beautiful without too much of a fuss.
Classic Christmas light bulbs often come in strings of clear or multi-colored lights. These incandescent light bulbs are pretty cheap, and you can buy a couple strings of them, fasten them along the edge of the roof, and then be done with it. There are also other configurations possible like candy cane red and white, green and blue, and blue and white, which come on a single string and are easy to hang.
LED lights are quickly growing in popularity as well. These string lights are usually a little more expensive up front, but they use 90% less energy and last longer than incandescent lights, which saves money in the long run. You can get them in cool or warm white tones, and even get them with faceted bulbs which allow the lights to sparkle.
Inspecting Equipment
Our list of tips on how to choose Christmas lights also includes a brief inspection, which will save you time and frustration later on. When you get your lights, make sure you inspect and test them before putting them up. Check to make sure that all of the light bulbs are intact and working, and check the wires for cuts and tears, which can introduce safety hazards. Be sure to plug your lights into an outlet with a ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) for safety. For an additional pro-tip, run everything through a timer module so you can time your lights to turn on and off at specific times, saving you the trouble of doing it manually every day.
With these initial inspections passed, you won’t have to make changes to lights that are already hanging up. Once everything looks good, you’re ready to hang your lights.
Hanging Lights
To top off the lighting portion of how to choose Christmas lights, we have some recommendations on hanging your lights. If your roof has a gutter around the rim, it is very easy to attach plastic clips to the gutter. You can also attach plastic clips to shingles, or onto vertical surfaces with adhesives or nails, depending on the clip designs. We recommend plastic light clips over nails and staples, as the latter run the risk of piercing the light wires and damaging them, which can create a safety hazard as well.
Adding Visual Interest
Want some additional ideas on how to choose Christmas lights for your roof without worrying about stringing up more lights? You can break up the repetition of string lights by adding some visual interest to your roof pretty easily. There is no shortage of roof decorations on the market, and you can pick up reindeer and sleds, nativity scenes, snowmen, Santas, and many other iconic decorations to mount on your roof. These types of decorations tend to have interior lighting too. Just fasten them to your roof, plug them in, and you’re all set.
Is Your Roof Good to Go?
We hope our guide on how to choose Christmas lights make the roof decorating experience a little easier on you. These holiday tips will at least help you simplify the task, and save time and energy. Soon enough, you’ll have a beautiful and luminous home radiating holiday cheer.