Holiday Lighting For Your Business
At home, it’s easy to break out the Christmas tree or wrap a few lights around your windows and doors for some holiday cheer. Yet when it comes to decorating for your store front windows, there’s a bit more planning involved. Here are some of the lighting options available to make your business outshine the rest.
Easy
String lights are the easiest way to decorate for the holidays. Add them around doors, windows, or shelves. Use adhesive clips to drape them on walls or all-in-one clips to line your gutters and rafters. Choose LED string lights when you need to connect a large number of sets together. Try incandescent string lights for a classic glow. Say goodbye to outlets and fill your vases and other transparent containers with battery operated string lights or ultra-thin wire “fairy” lights for a little extra twinkle in your displays.
Lighting Tip: Don’t mix your incandescents with your LEDs. Incandescent lights consume far more power than LEDs. If you connect the two light sources together and then try to turn them on, you could blow the fuse in your LED light strand.
Intermediate
Ready to take your lighting to the next level? If you need more light or a little custom color coordination in your display, then choose C7 or C9 bulbs and their stringers. The bulbs are sold separately from the light strings, allowing you to design your light string in any color, order, and length you like. A few things to remember when using these types of custom light strings: UL recommends no more than 216 Watts on one circuit. Therefore if you use LED C7 bulbs at 0.6 Watts per bulb, you are limited 360 sockets per circuit. Our commercial-quality stringers have 12-inch socket spacing. So to be safe and avoid a blowout, we suggest 350 sockets or 350 feet as the maximum run. Incandescent bulbs limit the length even further. To know how many sockets you can have in one run, just divide 216 by the wattage of the bulbs you plan to use. Stringers 500 feet and longer typically don’t include attached male or female end plugs; you will need to wire a plug to the stringer to connect it to an outlet.
Lighting Tip: Add an indoor or outdoor timer to your holiday lighting display to ensure your lights are energy efficient by turning on and off at just the right moment.
Advanced
It’s relatively simple to light your business for the holidays with the flick of a switch, but if you aspire to create a lighting extravaganza, you’re going to need to put in some work. The biggest displays do more than light up, they entertain. You will need a lot of outlets or possibly a dedicated power supply, a lot of lights, an Arduino board and a laptop, your favorite holiday tune, and some computer programming knowledge to create an automated and synchronized light show. Technically, you can use any type of light. However we suggest LED rope light to get the most bang for your buck. LED rope light can be run 150 feet uncut, it’s flexible enough for all sorts of fantastic shapes and words, and rated for any wet weather that may come your way. You can find code for specific songs on the internet, telling the Arduino board to flash, fade, or switch from one color to the next in time with the music. But you will need do some research if you want to create a specific event or look.
Lighting Tip: Major lighting displays require a lot of planning. Before you do anything, draw up a diagram of where every light needs to be, how many lights you will need, the wattage, and the amperage you will consume. (Try not to blackout the neighborhood!) Also consider things like where your outlets are and if you need extension cords to reach them.
Do you have the perfect holiday lights or would you like some help? Call 1-800-624-4488 to consult one of our representatives dedicated to making this season bright with easy lighting solutions.
