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By Dave and Mary
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Outdoor Christmas Light Ideas
and Tips from the Experts
Our outdoor Christmas light ideas will definitely help you create a magnificent display.
Mary and I had the fortunate pleasure of interviewing Bob Lyons Sr., Partner with Outdoor Lighting Perspectives located in Nashville, TN.
Bob shares his "secrets" to creating wonderful holiday light displays and installing outdoor Christmas lights safely.
He also provides answers to many questions people have regarding how to attach Christmas lights and how many strings of lights can be added without causing an issue.
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives also shares a few of their amazing photos to give you many Christmas light decorating ideas.
Who doesn't love a few good tips to make the holiday season go smoother?
Especially when it comes to putting up your Christmas lights.
That's what we have in store for you today.
Beautiful home with sophisticated holiday lighting
Lighting Expert Bob Lyons Christmas Lighting Tips
The following discussion is an excerpt from our interview with Bob Lyons Sr. from Outdoor Lighting Perspectives.
Mary and I are very appreciative of the information Bob shared with us and we really enjoyed our discussion with him.
All About the Lights
What you first have to decide is what color you want to use or whether you want to use all white or clear.
And then you have to decide whether you want to augment it with different features like starbursts, wreaths,garland, or other holiday decorations.
Then you have to decide if it's better to concentrate on one area of your yard or porch (and do it really well) or broaden out (and possibly not do as good a job overall).
Why LED Lights
Festive LED holiday lights
When you use colors in LED lights, whether it be multi, blue, red, yellow, or green, LED color is what they call saturated.
Saturated means that reds are true reds.
Outdoor LED Christmas lights have true color from the light that is emitted versus incandescent bulbs which change with the coloring on the outside of the bulb.
Incadescent bulbs are softer colors, if you will, versus the vibrant colors from LED lights.
It's honestly a matter of preference.
Light Spacing Matters
The wire is the most expensive part of a light set.
So they put lights every 2 or 2 1/2 inches.
If you are trying to light a tree you should use lights with 6-inch spacing.
Note the light spacing on this beautifully lit home
You end up putting too many strings sets on the tree and they are too close together.
It's still better to use four or six-inch spacing on large evergreens because you can do more with them.
One might be 16 feet long for 100 lights whereas the other larger spaced light set is 33 feet long for 100 lights.
So you have the opportunity to do a lot more.
You can always bunch them closer, but you can't extend them out.
You can buy lights (referral link) with different spacing.
When you go to the store look for commercial light sets and if they have commercial, look at the spacing.
Very few are 6 inch spacing. Most are 4 inch and then 2-1/2 inch.
You can go online and buy commercial 6 inch spacing light sets.
Be Savvy About Power Requirements for Your Outdoor Christmas Light Ideas
First and foremost, outside Christmas lights need to be plugged into a GFCI protected circuit.
SAFETY FIRST: Running extension cords through a window to plug them into any receptacle
that is not GFCI protected to power your outdoor Christmas lights is extremely hazardous.
A GFCI is the only device that is designed to protect you from an electrical short circuit or other failure.
All outdoor receptacles should be GFCI protected by building codes.
If you are not sure if you have GFCI protection, contact a licensed electrical contractor.
If you put more than about six or seven hundred watts of lights on a GFCI receptacle,
the first time it rains there is a good chance that ground fault is going to kick out.
So you are having a party Saturday night, it's raining, and all of a sudden your lights are not working.
You have to walk out behind the bushes and reset the ground fault.
Sometimes they'll hold, sometimes they do not.
However, it is normally not an issue with LED lights because if you use 300 watts of incandescence you are going to only use 30 watts of LED.
You can add a whole bunch more lights on LEDs without getting into a wattage issue or where the ground fault starts to kick off.
Stringing Lights Together?
Mary asked: "When you get the packages of lights from the store sometimes it will say you can only string like three of these strands together.
So what if you have porch columns and the three strands aren't long enough.
What can you do about that?"
Bob says: "LEDs have solved that problem.
It's the wire size that determines how many string sets you can put together along with the wattage used on those wire sets.
So if you think about it, if you are using 33 watts which is a typical hundred light incandescent light section a 22-gauge wire then you can run three.
If it is a 20 gauge wire or an 18-gauge wire you could run six.
But you go to LEDs, you can run probably up to 25."
Combine strings of lights for a cohesive effect
"So you don't have to worry too much about that.
But still be conservative and don't run a lot of string sets on there.
Break them up.
You can run extension cords or these new multi-plug power units.
Drive in the ground and they have six different plugs in them and you can use a timer."
We find that the best timer is the one that you plug in and it has four, six, or eight hours and comes on at dusk and goes off at four, six or eight hours later.
Most of them have two receptacles on them so if you use them for two separate places, you might have half your lights come on maybe a minute or two
earlier depending on how sensitive the photocell is.
If you are going to string lights like on the movie Christmas Vacation, call your electrical company and ask to have another transformer run to your house.
You can always go and plug into a receptacle in the garage, plus outside.
Be careful plugging lights in the garage.
If you have a refrigerator or a freezer out there and a circuit breaker trips - that's a problem so just be careful.
Wrapping Lights on Trees - a Super Tip
You can do about a 25 foot tree from the ground without thinking about it.
Go to your home supply store and get a telescopic paint roller pole which can extend up to 18 feet.
If you notice, the roller comes up and bends.
Bend the roller straight up and remove the roller supports so it has nothing on it.
Beautifully wrapped tree in holiday lights
So now you have basically a hook.
Put the string sets together and one person walks in front of you and just go around the tree and until you reach the top; then bring it back down.
Tie it off and go back up and keep on going.
One-person can do a tree that is maybe 12 to 13 feet tall and two people can do one much larger.
Another outdoor Christmas light idea!
Installing Outdoor Christmas Lights
It seems outlining your house went out of vogue completely but now it's back in.
There are the old-fashioned lights what are called C9s which are the larger-sized lights.
But now you can buy them in LED.
We buy them in thousand four foot rolls and the lights are one foot spacing.
And we can cut it to exactly what we need.
We buy them in thousand four foot rolls and the lights are one foot spacing.
So if you need 14 feet, you can cut it to 14 feet.
If you need 100 feet you get a 100 feet.
Otherwise, you may have a lot of light string remaining that has to be hidden.
C-9 holiday lights outline home
And with LED you can run a hundred lights whereas with incandescence you can't run that many.
You are going to see more outlining and you normally want to use a large bulb that has a larger presence rather than what we call midget lights.
C9s are the larger lights and C7's are the little ones that are used typically on Christmas trees.
We actually hire roofers to outline homes.
We tell the roofers exactly what we want and they are licensed, bonded, and insured.
I don't care whether you are Chevy Chase or not, don't go up on the roof because it is too dangerous.
Sad But True:
Mary and I know of someone who crawled out of their second story window to take down lights on their roof.
Unfortunately, he fell onto the front sidewalk and died.
Bob's idea of hiring professional roofers to hang lights just makes good sense.
Untangling and Troubleshooting
How to Prevent a Tangled Mess
Mary asked: " I have two questions that I think just about every homeowner would want to know and that is when you go and get your Christmas lights out on the attic.
First of all, they are tangled up and usually it is a tangled mess.
Second of all, you plug them in and sometimes they don't come on and it is like you have to check every single bulb.
So, are there any secrets about how you wrap your lights"?
Bob says: "Let's first do the wrap and that's the easiest one.
If you take your hand and put the female end first, put it across your palm, wrap three or four rounds;
take that off and then and then start wrapping and end up with a ball with the male end out.
So when you go to test them you can plug it in before you undo them.
A 100 light set is two 50's put together. How many times have you plugged in a set and half of them work and half of them don't work.
It means that something pulled loose at the joint where those two were joined.
And there is no way to fix it.
You take that ball and you put it in the garbage can."
Tennessee Capital Christmas Tree - lights by Outside Lighting Perspectives
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives is recognized as one of the world's
largest full-service outdoor lighting company that specializes in outdoor lighting.
With more than 100,000 installations completed, this franchise knows what it takes to grace thousands of homes and businesses and has been doing such since 1995.
Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Nashville operates in the middle Tennessee area and is a premiere holiday decor company
providing all types of outdoor lighting for both residential and commercial entities.
They use the latest designs in high quality LED products supported by innovative technology to bring you the very best in holiday décor.
We encourage you to visit them today at Nashville Christmas Lights.
We hope our visit with Bob gave you some inspirational outdoor Christmas light ideas for your home and porch.
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