Design & Decor
Let there be Christmas Lights
…and Let Somebody Else Hang Them Up
BY
Bridget Heos
PHOTOGRAPHY
courtesy Kansas City Christmas Décor

 
Ahh…Christmas lights. They envelop your home in a warm glow. They bring joy to passers-by. They cause children to daydream about Santa. But they can give you a pain in the neck. The extension cords, the ladders, the fuses, the burnt out bulbs — if one goes, they all go!

Remember, ’tis the season to be jolly, not grumpy. You want your house to be colorful, not your vocabulary.

Fear not. Now more people are hiring pros to deck the halls. “Every year we’re gaining clientele,” says Jeremy Crow of Summit Lawn and Landscape. Many homeowners are finding that paying for the service is worth the holiday hassle. “It’s a lot easier to shell out $500 initially and then $200 in the following years than to get up on a ladder and do it yourself,” he notes.

Seth Brown, owner of Panes & Drains, Inc. in Liberty, noticed the same increase in demand for holiday lighting professionals and started hanging Christmas lights for his gutter and window customers. As word spread, his holiday business grew. Now he provides Christmas lights for customers, or they can use their own.

He seconds Jeremy’s notion that not only is the hanging easier for a specialized company, but it’s safer. “Many people don’t feel comfortable up on ladders,” Seth says.

In addition, professionals can often give a home a cleaner presentation. “It looks just as good in the daytime as it does in the night,” he notes. “People want to see the lights and not the wires.”

The cost varies by company, by square footage and by the elaborateness of the display. Seth charges about $500 for a street-side outline of a home. Travis Kuster, who owns the Kansas City Christmas Décor franchise, says that while he also does $500 jobs, it is not unusual for his customers to spend $5,000 on their holiday displays, which might include a lighted roof, 14-inch-wide lighted garlands, a 6-foot-tall wreath, stake lights, decorations on lawn trees and motifs including reindeer and Santa Claus.

He once did a $20,000 job. And did it look Griswold-esque? On the contrary, Travis says, “It looked great, really professional.” His company provides the lights and decorations; customers cannot use their own.

Professional-quality anything makes sense to today’s consumers. “Everybody’s becoming more service-oriented,” Travis says. “People want to spend the time they have either doing what they do well, or with family and friends.”

The process is simple. The lighting professionals come out to your house and discuss what you’d like, such as the roofline and windows and doors trimmed with lights. Then the pros begin hanging the lights. Usually, homeowners don’t have to be present because the professionals don’t come inside. If a light burns out, they come to your house and replace it. In January, they take down the lights and pack them away.

Once people begin using the service, they usually continue year after year, changing up the palette and adding other items. The industry is evolving, too.

Travis says that light emitting diodes (LEDs) are growing in popularity. LEDs, which you see on alarm clocks, are durable, bright and come in a rainbow of colors. And unlike Clark Griswold’s holiday lights in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, an over-the-top display won’t create a neighborhood blackout.

According to IMDB.com, the LED display on Danny Davito’s character’s house in the movie Deck the Halls drew the amount of energy typically used for 1.3 households. Conventional lights would have drawn eight houses’ worth of power.

LED lights are expensive, but Travis predicts the price will go down and the demand will rise like Santa’s magical sleigh. “LED — that’s going to explode,” he comments. “LED is going to be everywhere.”  

And so might professionally hung Christmas lights. When Seth drives around with his sons to see Christmas lights, he takes note of the craftsmanship involved. “You can tell a professional display from other displays,” he says.