Christmas lights are an excellent way to infuse your church building with holiday cheer and brighten up your local community! However, it’s crucial to hang them correctly to prevent damage to your church building.
Follow these tips for hanging holiday lights to ensure you, your team, and the church building stays safe while “decking the halls” this Christmas!
Safety & Preparation Tips Before Hanging Your Christmas Lights
Create a Plan
First, you’ll need to decide where you want to place lights on your church’s exterior and interior to ensure you have enough. We recommend picking a focal point to highlight, like your roofline.
Measure Your Church
Measure your church to decide how many strands of lights you’ll need. Then, measure the distance from your power source to determine if you’ll need an exterior-grade extension cord. You should avoid plugging too many strands together—this is a fire hazard.
Check Old Bulbs
Pull your lights out of storage, untangle the strands, and ensure the bulbs are in working order. Throw away any strands with exposed wires, broken sockets, or dead bulbs. When replacing your lights, you may want to upgrade your old incandescent lights to LED bulbs for greater energy efficiency.
Purchase Clips
Holes in your walls or roof can lead to costly leaks, so you shouldn’t use nails, screws, or staples to hang your holiday lights. Instead, purchase adhesive plastic clips for columns and railings and universal plastic clips for your roofline or siding.
Inspect Your Ladder
Finally, ensure your ladder is safe to use. Metal ladders may conduct electricity, so it’s wise to use a wooden or fiberglass ladder while hanging holiday lights.
Tips for Properly Hanging Your Christmas Lights
Now that your ladder, lights, extension cords, and clips are ready, it’s time for the fun part—hanging the lights! Follow this helpful guide to ensure the process goes seamlessly:
Roof Peak
Your church’s roofline is a popular place to hang holiday lights for a fun, festive appearance.
Choose a dry, sunny day when it’s not raining or snowing to hang your lights. There should also be at least two people (if not more!) available to work on the project—one must steady the extension ladder from the ground, and the other can hang the lights.
The person climbing the ladder should wear a hands-free tool bag or belt to ensure they can ascend the ladder safely. At the top, they should attach the lights using universal clips (not nails or staples) that can slide under the roofing shingles or clamp onto the gutters to keep your roof in excellent condition. Experts recommend placing each clip twelve inches apart.
Siding
If you have lap or shingle siding—decorating your church’s exterior with lights is easy!
Simply slide a clip between two siding panels, hang the lights, and repeat the process every twelve inches. You may need a ladder (and a helper) to reach the upper portions of your siding, depending on the height of your church building. Again, avoid using nails or staples to keep your siding free of holes that can cause costly water damage.
Landscaping
If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of decorating hard-to-reach places on your church building, decorating your landscaping can easily add holiday cheer to your church’s property.
For example, you can invest in “net lights” to throw over bushes and shrubs for straightforward decorating that looks festive (no nails, staples, or clips needed). You can also wrap columns, railings, gazebos, bridges, and other features on your property that aren’t on your main building. Just use high-quality adhesive clips that will stick (and stay) on throughout the holiday season.
Inside
If you’d like to drape holiday lights across your indoor walls to add festive ambiance to your church, it’s best to use adhesive clips that you can “stick on” and “stick off” your wall without creating any holes. Again, use a clip for every twelve inches of lights.
You can also decorate with festive pre-lit decorations inside, like wreaths and trees, to avoid the hassle of hanging lights altogether.
Enhance Your Church with Festive Cheer—and Expand Your Building for the New Year
We hope this decorating guide helps you make your church sparkle this holiday season! If you’re considering adding beautiful, functional space to your church to accommodate your growing congregation in the new year—give our team a call.
In the meantime, read our testimonials from pastors around the country who have trusted Churches by Daniels to expand their ministry vision with reliable church construction.
