Christmas is fast approaching and many people are searching for new holiday lighting tips to brighten up their homes and improve their overall lighting display. The truth is that when it comes to lights during Christmas and the other winter holidays, it can be difficult trying to set them up, replace them, and save on their energy use. It makes finding practical and safe methods to use in your home that much more important, but that task can come with some challenges. In case you aren’t quite sure where to start, your retail electric provider has some great ideas for using lights to decorate your home or apartment for the holiday.
Here’s How to Hang Your Christmas Lights
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Hanging Christmas lights can present a number of challenges as obstacles like hard to reach places and the elements can make setting them up a pain and keeping them up a struggle. Luckily there are some simple ways you can make hanging your Christmas lights simpler while also helping to highlight the effect of their glow. To begin, you’ll want to pick a central point to showcase.
In selecting this area, some things that should be taken into consideration include the height of the space or object, the appearance of the lights in darkness, and any possible holds that lights can be wrapped around. From there, you’ll want to test your lights to confirm they’re in working order, that way you don’t make the discovery after you have already hung them.
The process will require patience as you’ll have to go about measuring out the number of lights strands you’ll need and formulating placement before trying to hang them. In the event you are planning on hanging your Christmas light outside with the help of a ladder, you should wait until the weather is calm to minimize risk.
Starlit Table Decoration
Instead of hanging Christmas lights, the festive look can still be achieved this holiday season by creating the illusion of stars behind your table covering. This is a simple way to give your home some holiday ambiance and does not require a lot time and effort. It will only require a light colored tablecloth, masking tape, and white holiday lights.
Once you have everything together, cover your table using the tablecloth, then use the masking tape to tape strings of white holiday lights around the bottom edge of your table, looping the lights so they are at varying lengths, but be careful not to let the lights hang below the table covering. The Christmas lights will shine through the table covering, giving it a starlit look.
Hanging an Indoor Spotlight
Another interesting holiday lighting tip to consider, should you prefer not to hang Christmas lights, is to use alternative forms of lighting to give your home a festive glow. One such method of doing this is to use clip-on plant or aquarium lights to spotlight special holiday arrangements, such as a nativity scene, mantle decorations or gingerbread houses within your home. These lights are inexpensive and are available at many discount or pet stores and can highlight the decorations outside of our homes as well as within them.
Indoor spotlights are particularly nice when hosting an event in your home or when you’re just trying to stir the Christmas spirit around the house each day. Above all else, indoor spotlights are a great way to get atmospheric lighting without putting in a lot of time or effort.
Avoid Tangling Your Christmas Lights
While the process of hanging Christmas lights can come with a number of challenges, few are quite as frustrating as tangles. Even when we make an honest effort to keep strings and lights unknotted, they still find a way, which not only has aesthetic drawbacks but functional ones too as it can be harder to completely connect strings together. This can be remedied with a change in Christmas light placement or style of light.
Instead of wrapping strings of lights around trees and bushes in your yard, one holiday lighting tip is take advantage of the wide variety of wire trees and net-style lights that make outdoor decorating much easier. Wire trees come in a variety of heights and colors, giving you the decorating freedom you want without having to untangle strings of lights. Be sure to put them back carefully too so that there is little trouble next year.
Light Your Driveway
The ability of Christmas lights to brighten homes extends beyond just the home to walkways and even the driveway as illuminating those different sections of our homes can evoke the Christmas spirit. And when it comes to lighting your walkways, there are a number of neat ways to showcase your holiday cheer.
One holiday lighting tip that will give your yard or balcony an old-fashioned look is to line walkways, patios, decks or balconies with luminaries. These can be created with the help of stencils and scissors, which can be used to cut out holiday designs in white paper bags. Following that, place a candle or solar powered light inside the bag. The solar powered light is the safest route to go and will still allow you the holiday glow you are hoping to achieve. Remember, that you should not to leave candles unattended for any length of time.
Garden Statuary Lights
As you go about hanging your Christmas lights, something to remember is that you don’t have to limit yourself to simply utilizing traditional holiday light locations for your decorations. In fact, sometimes figuring out how to hang Christmas lights from a new spot can make for a display that is just as successful as a standard location, if not more so.
One place of note that this could be the case is among garden statuary. That means placing clusters of lights in the hands of garden statues, such as cherubs, angels, and even gnomes can make for an interesting holiday lighting change up. At the very least it will allow for an immaculate holiday glow. You can also place clusters of lights inside bird bath bowls for an interesting holiday effect.
Put Christmas Lights On A Timer
Once you have hung up your Christmas lights, something to consider is placing them on a timer. There are a number of inexpensive outdoor timers that can be purchased and the benefits of using them extend beyond just the hassle of turning holiday lights on and off. For many households, leaving lights on for an extended time is a standard practice but one that comes at a cost. Especially for those who hang Christmas lights early in the holiday season and leave them up, that expense increases. And if for a night you forget to turn them off, that comes as an unwanted spike in your energy use.
You can save yourself from all of this by putting lights on a timer, which will automatically shut them off at the specified time. In looking at timers, there are two main types, standard and photocell. As their name suggests, standard timers rely on an internal clock that triggers the glow. Photocell timers on the other hand are able to detect darkness and activate. Typically they have several settings allowing users to cut off lights after several hours of use or stay on until dawn.
Hanging Christmas Lights gives your home a festive, warm feeling and these holiday lighting tips are just a few of the many ways you can use lights to decorate your spaces.
