Should you hang your own Christmas lights?
Four questions about your house and how you feel about heights. We will tell you straight — including when the answer is that you do not need us.
Start with the house
Height is the single biggest factor in whether this is a DIY job.
Where the line actually falls
We install Christmas lights for a living across Alpharetta, Roswell, Johns Creek, Milton and the rest of North Atlanta, so treat the following with the appropriate scepticism. But we would rather be the company that told you the truth than the one that sold you a job you did not need.
Do it yourself if…
Your house is one storey, the eave is reachable from an extension ladder or a hanging pole, and you are comfortable at that height with someone footing the ladder. That is a genuinely pleasant weekend job. Buy commercial-grade strings and proper clips once, store them on reels, and you will be reusing the same kit in five years for the price of a few replacement bulbs.
The same goes for trees, shrubs and pathways at any height of house. Landscape lighting is all at ground level, it is quick, and net lights over a shrub take about a minute each. There is no reason to pay anyone for that part.
Think hard if…
You are on two storeys. A two-storey eave sits around 22 feet up, which means a 28-foot extension ladder, moving it every ten feet, and doing that thirty or forty times in the cold. It is done safely by plenty of homeowners — but a telescoping pole that lets you seat clips from the ground changes the calculation more than any other purchase, and it costs less than one section of the job.
Hire someone if…
The roof is steep, the plan needs you standing on it rather than working from the edge, the house is three storeys, or heights are not something you enjoy. Those are not close calls. Our crews use roof anchors and harnesses on houses like that, and the reason is not insurance paperwork.
"I do not like ladders" is a complete and sensible reason on its own. You do not have to justify it with anything else.
What we see across North Atlanta
The housing stock decides a lot of this. Much of Alpharetta, Johns Creek and Milton is two-storey brick and stucco with steep pitches and tall gables, and that is the profile where homeowners most often start the job and call us halfway through. Older single-storey ranches around Roswell, Marietta and Woodstock are the opposite: low eaves, gentle pitch, and a genuinely straightforward afternoon for anyone comfortable on a ladder.
The other local factor is timing. Georgia gives you a narrow good-weather window in November, and once December sets in you are working on damp shingle in the cold with fewer daylight hours. A job that is reasonable on a mild Saturday in early November is a different proposition three weeks later, so whichever way you decide, decide early — our own books for the season close around November 1st.
The costs, honestly
A DIY kit for a typical 140-foot roofline — commercial C9 strings, around 140 clips, a timer, outdoor cord and connection covers — lands somewhere between $200 and $400 depending on how good the strings are. Add a hanging pole or a ladder standoff and you are closer to $300 to $500 in year one. After that, you are replacing perhaps 15 percent a year.
Our all-inclusive install for the same house starts at $800 and includes the lights, the design, maintenance if anything fails mid-season, removal in January and storage until next November. The gap in year one is real but smaller than most people assume; by year three DIY is clearly cheaper in cash. What you are actually buying from us is the ladder work, the guarantee that it gets fixed if a section dies in December, and never having to find somewhere to keep it all in the garage.
If you want the exact numbers for your house rather than a range, the light planner costs out a full shopping list and puts it side by side with our install price, and the estimate tool gives you a ballpark from us in about thirty seconds.
Common questions
Is hanging Christmas lights yourself actually dangerous?
On a single-storey house with a walkable roof, worked off a ladder with someone footing it, it is an ordinary household job. The risk climbs sharply with height: a two-storey eave is around 22 feet up, which needs a 28-foot extension ladder and confident footing. Falls from ladders are the reason this trade exists, and almost all of them happen above one storey.
How much does it cost to have Christmas lights installed instead?
Our displays run from $800 for a straightforward single-storey roofline up to around $3,500 for a large multi-elevation home with trees and landscape lighting. That covers design, installation, maintenance through the season, removal in January and storage until next year.
Is it cheaper to buy my own lights and hang them?
In year one, usually not by as much as people expect once you count commercial-grade strings, several hundred clips, cords, a timer and possibly a pole or ladder standoff. From year two onward you own the lights, so DIY is clearly cheaper in cash — you are trading money for a weekend of your time at height, every year.
Can I do part of it myself and hire out the rest?
Yes, and plenty of our customers do exactly that. The split that makes the most sense is having us do the roofline, where all the height risk sits, and doing the trees, shrubs and pathway yourself. Those are at ground level, quick, and genuinely satisfying to do.
What if I already own the lights?
We will install lights you have bought yourself. There is a lower per-foot rate for it than our all-inclusive lease, since we are not supplying the product. The one thing we will check first is whether the strings are in good enough condition to warranty through the season.