Cochrane Residential
Christmas Light Installation

Everything from the first measurement to the last box put away. Our Christmas light installers design the display around your house, supply commercial-grade LED strands cut to fit your roofline, install them with clips made for shingles and eavestroughs, set up an automatic timer, take the display down in January and store it labelled at our shop until next November. Season-long maintenance is part of it, so if a run goes dark or the timer drifts, we come back and fix it at no extra charge. One price covers all of it, and there is no separate takedown invoice in the new year.

The price depends on how much linear footage we are lighting, how high it sits, and whether you want trees, pillars and wreaths included alongside the roofline. A single-storey bungalow with a clean front roofline costs less than a two-storey home with multiple peaks and gables. Every quote is fixed and written before any work starts, and it always includes the lights themselves, the install, mid-season fixes, January takedown and off-season storage. Storefronts and managed properties are quoted differently under commercial Christmas light installation.

No. We use purpose-made plastic clips designed to sit on a shingle edge or hook over an eavestrough lip, and nothing is stapled, nailed or screwed into your fascia. This is where being a roofing crew matters. Bright West is the holiday lighting partner of Sure West Roofing, so the installers know exactly where a fastener causes a leak, because they are the people who repair them.

Christmas lights on stucco need a fixing that never touches the stucco itself, because stucco is a rendered finish over lath and it does not forgive a hole. A fastener driven into it cracks the render, and every crack is a route for water that then freezes and widens it. Adhesive hooks are the usual answer sold for stucco and they are the usual failure, because the bond gives up in real cold and the strand comes down with a piece of the finish still attached. On a stucco home we run the display off the shingle edge, the eavestrough or the soffit line above instead, so the strand is fixed to the roof edge and the wall is left alone.

Yes. Christmas lights on a gutter guard need the run moved rather than the clip forced, because a mesh or solid cover fills the space a standard gutter clip is meant to sit in. Clipping onto the guard itself is what causes the damage: the tab levers the panel up, water then runs behind it, and the guard is what you end up replacing. On a guarded roofline we take the run to the shingle edge above the guard, or to the soffit and fascia line below it, whichever gives the straighter line from the street. Nothing is fixed to the guard.

Christmas lights on brick and stone are hung off the roof edge rather than off the wall, because drilling either one for a seasonal display is permanent. The mortar joint is softer than the brick and it is where masonry fixings are sometimes set, but a joint repointed every season is a joint that has stopped keeping water out. Instead the run follows the shingle edge, the eavestrough or the soffit above the masonry, and pillars, columns and posts are wrapped rather than fixed to. Nothing is left in the wall when the display comes down in January.

Christmas lights on a house with no eavestroughs go on the shingle edge instead. An all-in-one clip grips the lip of the first shingle course and holds the bulb upright, so the line follows the drip edge exactly as it would over a trough. Where the overhang is too short to take a clip and the fascia is bare, the display moves up to the peak and gable lines or down to the soffit, rather than putting a staple or a screw into fascia board, which is the wettest timber on the house.

A straightforward single-storey roofline with no tree work is usually a few hours for a two person crew, including setting the timer and testing the display at dusk. A two-storey home with peaks, wrapped pillars and trees out front is most of a day, because height and access move the time far more than footage does. Book as early as you can: booking opens in late summer, installs run from October into early December, and the last two weekends of November go first. You do not need to be home, because the whole job happens outside. Move cars off the driveway, unlock the side gate, keep dogs indoors, tell us where irrigation heads, septic lids, low voltage cable and skylights sit, and confirm which exterior outlet is live. You can see finished Christmas light displays of every type in our gallery.

The set stays Bright West property. Your strands are cut to your roofline, labelled with your address and kept at our shop through the off season, so what you are paying for is a lit house for the season rather than a box of lights for the garage. Because the set belongs to us, we replace a failed run mid-season without an argument about who pays for the strand. If you decide not to book the following season, nothing further is owed and there is nothing to return. If you would rather own your lights outright, raise it when we quote.

A tip is not expected. The Bright West crew are paid employees on wages, and the written quote is the whole price of the job, so nothing about the install, the mid-season fixes or the January takedown changes either way. If the crew have done well by you, a Google review or a word to a neighbour on your street is worth far more to us than cash at the door, and it costs you nothing.