Professional Christmas Lighting Installation in Stephenson, Virginia

This Christmas lighting installation took place in Stephenson, VA, and included a custom design of lights along the roofline, a lit wreath, and the wrapping of two medium pine trees on either side of the house with mini LED lights and a dusk to dawn photocell timer.

As with all our installations, we start by contacting the customer on-site. Once we have made contact, we give them a quick rundown of where we will be and what we will be doing and invite them to feel free to stop us with any questions during the process.

We then do a pre-job inspection and document any pre-existing damage to the property. We then send the customer a PDF of our inspection.

Upon inspection completion, we put out our A-frame caution sign, which notifies everyone of the overhead work. We then unload all of our tools, materials, ladders, safety equipment, and speaker.

As part of every Christmas light installation, we all wear Santa Hats and play Christmas music to help give us a rhythm to work to and to keep us in the Christmas spirit.

Once everything is ready, we run through our game plan, delegate jobs, and verify our power pathway.

Proper planning of your power from the outdoor plug to the photocell controller and up to the rooflines is imperative to keeping the installation looking clean and beautiful. Our goal is to hide as many of the power cords as possible, giving the illusion of the lights being wireless.

We then begin the installation process. Everything we install is custom-cut to fit on-site. Including the power cords and plug ends.

We got our power from the outdoor plug on the front porch for this job. We ran a jumper cord from the plug along the bottom of the decorative stone work on the house's front wall around the front porch to the gutter hidden behind one of the pine trees we would later be wrapped with Mini Lights. We secured the photocell controller with a zip tie to the gutter and used the jumper cord to give it power.

Once this was done, we ran another jumper cord up behind the gutter to the first roofline over the front porch, then up the side of the house, tucked into the siding, and up to the top roofline.

After that, we began running the Christmas lights along the top roof line. This customer elected to go with Deluxe Warm White Crystalline C9 bulbs, which are very bright but also give off a very warm, inviting light. We refer to this color scheme as “The Champagne Christmas.”

For the rooflines, we used green socket wire with 12” spacing and universal clips, which secure the sockets to the roof very well and keep the bulbs standing up straight throughout the season.

In order to make everything look as good as possible, we do our best to ensure that there is a bulb at the peak of every section. The best way we’ve found to do this is to go to the peak and let the strand slide down one side until your end bulb is at the bottom of the roof peak. Then, clip the bulb that matches up with your peak and work your way down, clipping each socket into place along the way.

In this install, the lit wreath was installed just under the highest peak, so while up there, we put one large white screw into the front of the house and hung the 36” wreath on the screw, and zip-tied it to the screw so no wind would be able to knock it down and tied it into the roof line lights.

Once the top roofline was done, we installed the lower roofline lights and tied them into the jumper cord we ran before.

Finally, we moved on to wrapping the pine trees on either side of the house. We start at the bottom and wrap around the tree with 5” spacing all the way to the top. As we go, we constantly check to verify that the wraps are equally spaced and sloping properly to give each tree the best appearance.

We do one final check of all lights, pick up any trash, pack up any leftover materials and or tools and notify the customer of completion and send them the invoice.

Budget: $1600

Location: Stephenson, VA