Hiring Out Your Christmas Lights: What to Ask Any Installer

Hanging Christmas lights is one of those jobs that sounds like an afternoon and turns into a weekend: ladders, tangled strands, a dead section you only find at dark. That's why more homeowners and property managers around Tyler hire it out. But not every installer does the same job. Riaz Landscaping offers outdoor and holiday lighting that covers the whole season, from custom cut Christmas lighting through installation, maintenance, takedown and year-round storage. Use that list as a checklist for any installer you're considering.

Custom cut: lights sized to your house

Custom cut lighting means the strands are made to the length your roofline actually needs, instead of a store-bought string draped and bunched wherever it reaches. The practical difference shows from the street. Bulbs are evenly spaced all the way to the ridge, corners are crisp and there are no coiled leftovers hiding behind a gable. It also means the installer measures first. If a company quotes your job without measuring or looking at your roofline, ask how they're arriving at the numbers. A multi-gable home with dormers and a long front porch calls for a very different layout than a plain ranch.

How it's attached

Ask what holds the lights to your house. Professional installers generally use clips or track made for the surface, whether that's a gutter, a shingle edge, fascia or brick, rather than staples or nails that leave holes. It's reasonable to ask what they use on your particular materials and who's responsible if something gets damaged.

Power and planning

Lights need outlets, and outlets have limits. A good installer asks where your exterior outlets are, whether they're on a ground-fault protected circuit, and how many strands can safely run off each one. They'll often use timers or controllers so the display comes on at dusk and shuts off at a set hour without anyone walking out to a switch. Ask who plans the electrical side and what happens if a breaker trips on a cold night.

Maintenance through the season

This is the question that separates a service from a one-time hang. Bulbs fail. A windstorm pulls a strand loose. A section goes dark the week before a party. The company's offering explicitly includes maintaining the lights throughout the holiday season, which means someone comes back when something goes wrong. Before you sign with anyone, ask how you report a problem, how quickly they typically respond, and whether repairs are included or billed separately. If the answer is a shrug, you've learned what you needed to know.

Weather matters too. Wind and heavy rain are the usual culprits in East Texas, and lights that are clipped down firmly and joined with weatherproof connectors ride them out better. Ask what connectors the installer uses and whether someone checks the display after a storm instead of waiting for you to notice.

Takedown, and the part everyone forgets: storage

Lights that go up in November tend to stay up until February if nobody's responsible for taking them down. A real service has a takedown plan. Then there's storage. They also provide year-round storage, so the strands cut for your roofline aren't coiled into a box in your garage and rediscovered tangled next December. Stored properly, custom cut strands can often go back up in the same places the following year. Ask any installer where your lights live in the off-season, whether they're labeled by section, and who has to find room for them.

Landscape lighting is the other half

The same company that lights your roofline can light your beds. Their lighting work runs from flowerbed landscape lighting to holiday displays, for residential and commercial properties. A set of uplights grazing a brick wall or a tree canopy works all year, not just in December, and it's worth planning both at once so the wiring and fixtures aren't fighting each other.

A short list to take with you

• Will you measure my roofline before quoting?
• What do you attach lights with, and on which surfaces?
• Who handles repairs during the season, and how fast?
• When is takedown, and is it included?
• Where are my lights stored until next year?
• Can you also light my beds and trees?

Busy seasons fill calendars at most companies, so it helps to ask early when you should call. If you'd like Carson to look at your roofline and talk through a plan, call Riaz Landscaping at (903) 508-0646.