Decorating the outside of your home this time of year is a great way to add some holiday spirit to your neighborhood. A little friendly competition with the neighbor about who has the best display. Watching families drive through your neighborhood in awe of all of the beautiful work that you have put in. Looking outside from your living room and feeling happy and proud of how festive your home looks. All of these are great benefits to outdoor home decorating.
Unfortunately, if it is not done correctly, there are some serious negatives to outdoor holiday decorating. This is especially true when it comes to any decorating that involves your roof, gutters, or roofing materials.
There is a right way and a wrong way to installing holiday decorations. And, the wrong way can leave your home damaged and vulnerable to water and other weather elements.
Here are some things to avoid:
- When hanging strands of holiday lights around the outside of your home, avoid stapling or nailing them to the shingles of your roof. This is a very dangerous practice and will leave serious damage to your roofing materials. The proper way to hang lights is to purchase gutter clips, and use them for installing the lights. A gutter clip hang over the edge of the rain gutter and has a clip or hook where the light strand rests. This is a much more efficient, and far less damaging method.
- When it comes time to take the holiday lights down, be cautious. Spend the time to remove your lights the same way that you did to install them. Do not just pull the cord of the light strand so that they all come down. You could rip the gutters off of your home in the process. Or, if you have skipped tip #1 and installed your lights directly to your shingles, you will cause some serious roof damage by pulling the strands down.
- There are many companies that provide holiday light installation and removal. It might be worth getting price quotes from a couple of them and having a professional install your holiday light decorations. This way you won’t feel pressured to get the job done and wrapped up by a certain time, and thus won’t cut corners.
Outdoor holiday decorating has come a long way as technology advances. Coordinating lights with various holiday songs, adding large inflatables to the lawn, and many other special holiday installations. Strands of lights are always going to be around, make sure that you are not causing damage to your home when you are using them.