8 Tips for Christmas Decorating Without Damaging Your Roof
Holiday season is here! And that means it’s time to dust off your decorations and get your house ready for visitors and spreading holiday cheer.
But with this happy holiday season comes a reminder to prioritize safety while decorating your home. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that there are around an average of 160 injuries each day of the holiday decorating season, and most of them are due to falls.
On top of being safe, your second priority should be preventing damage to your roof and home. So to help, we’ve pulled together a list of eight tips for decorating for Christmas without damaging your roof and home.
1. Use Clips for Holiday Lights
Plastic clips work well for hanging Christmas lights without causing any damage to your roof or gutters. They make holiday lights easy to install and remove, and they don’t require you to get on your roof.
2. Don’t Staple or Nail Your Shingles
Hang Christmas roof lights without damaging your roof by avoiding shortcuts like stapling or nailing any part of your home. Any hole in your shingles could lead to additional damage like water leaks, and they put you at greater risk of sustaining serious storm damage when nasty weather hits.
3. Protect Your Gutters
Your gutters serve an essential function of diverting water away from your home, so you want to make sure they’re always in functioning condition. This is especially important as we enter wintertime and experience heavy snowfall. Make sure you aren’t damaging your gutters by hanging your Christmas lights improperly or with the wrong materials.
4. Secure Inflatable Decorations
It’s not uncommon for homes in Colorado to be subject to heavy winds. As such, make sure any inflatable or lightweight decorations you’re installing are securely fastened with proper weights or by being tied to a secure structure. Do not, under any circumstances, secure your decorations with nails or staples!
5. Avoid Heavy Decorations
You also want to avoid the idea of any heavy decorations on your roof, gutters, and soffit/fascia boards. Adding unnecessary weight to these parts of your home opens you up to damage down the line. If you want to add some decorative flare to your roof beyond standard lights, opt for a sustainable decoration for your roof that is lightweight and will be secure throughout the season.
6. Be Mindful of Extension Cords
If you must use extension cords for your display, only use appropriate cords that are intended for use outside. Doing so will safeguard you from fire hazards. You also want to avoid using unnecessarily long cords that create tripping hazards.
7. Space Your Decorations Appropriately
When planning out your Christmas decorations on your roof, pay attention to where everything will be placed. Avoid any location near power lines and your chimney (fire hazards), tree branches (puncture damage), and your roof vents (blockage).
8. Try to Avoid Getting on Your Roof
When you’re thinking about how to hang lights without damaging your roof, it’s best to remove getting on your roof from the equation all together. Anytime you get on your roof, you’re putting yourself at risk of injury, and you may also be causing damage if you’re unfamiliar with your roof or unaware of potential problem areas.
Get a Roof Inspection Before Winter
As the seasons change and we turn toward the holidays and wintertime, it’s the perfect opportunity to have your roof professionally inspected to make sure you’re not at risk of damage. J&K Roofing can help with a free inspection of your entire roofing system before it’s too late and winter weather begins.
Give us a call at 303-425-7531 or schedule online here.