Light Up The Night Without Dampening Your City's Power Grid: Holiday Lighting Madness Done Right

It is that time of year again. People start going crazy for holiday light displays. It does not even have to be Christmas, considering that some people go all out for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Chanukah. Whatever holiday you celebrate, you want to be sure you are not causing a rolling blackout in your neighborhood, or dampening your city's power grid just to display your holiday enthusiasm. Here is how landscape lighting design ideas, holiday spirit, and conservative use of power come together to create the perfect light show in your yard and on your property.

Trees and Fences

Trees and fences are the easiest to decorate. All you have to do is drape lights over and around them. If you want to secure the lights on the fence, small thumbtacks or electrical wiring clips work really well.

Carport Arches

Light up the driveway with carport or garden arches. They assemble quickly, and you can wrap individual strings of lights around them in multiple colors and styles. If you set things up just right, it can look like snowflakes are falling through and the lights are twinkling in the night.

Light Planks

Create light planks for your roof. Use lightweight and thin fiberboard to create a sandwich message board-type of structure. The apex of the structure will drape over the peaks of your home so that the boards themselves will not slip off the roof. The strings of lights can be attached with small clips to help loop the lights up and down the lengths of the boards. Try to loop light strings such that as you finish one string, it plugs into the next string on the next set of sandwich boards. This is faster, safer, and easier than trying to loop lights over the roof your house as you stand on it. 

​Use ONLY LED Lights

You can now purchase strings of LED holiday lights that burn for tens of thousands of hours, using only a very minute amount of electrical energy. If you invest in these light strings, it will initially cost more to purchase them, but it will cost you thousands less in electrical bills because these lights just do not burn the electricity like traditional light strings. In fact, there is no possible way for you to cause a blackout when you are using LEDs, even if you use several thousand lights all at once. The best news of all is that you can now get LED lights in all colors and styles, which means you can light up the night as bright as you want, without the expense, without the loss of working lights or power, and provide an all out show.

Contact a landscape lighting design expert for more help.

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