Arden-Arcade Christmas Light Installation

Our favorite Arden-Arcade look is a long, low ranch roof sitting under an oak or a sycamore that’s older than the house. That canopy is the best part of Arden-Arcade Christmas light installation, and also the part that takes the most planning. Our crew is based in downtown Sacramento, a few minutes down Fulton Avenue, so you’re one of our closest neighbors. Call (916) 313-4551, describe the trees, and we’ll quote it right there.

Almost all of Arden-Arcade was built out between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s. So you get single-story homes with long, straight eaves, wide front yards, and a garage that used to be a carport. A long flat eave takes a clean run of roofline lights beautifully, and there’s usually no second story to wrestle with.

The quirks come with age. Gutters on these houses have seen a lot of leaf seasons, and the outdoor outlet is wherever somebody decided to put it back in 1958. We check that the gutter lip is solid and clip every bulb on. Gutter clips on the gutter, shingle tabs on composition roofs, and never a staple or a nail. If you’ve got one of the older tile or shake roofs you still spot around here, we use clips made for that surface and keep our weight off anything brittle.

Cottage Park is full of modest midcentury homes on compact lots, and those are some of the jobs we enjoy most. Outline the eave, hang one glowing wreath where the mail carrier can see it, tuck a few stakes by the walk, and the place looks dressed up for very little fuss.

Around Town & Country Village, near Fulton and Marconi, the streets are a mix of single-family houses, condos and apartment buildings. For condos we stick to what your HOA allows, which is usually your own entry, patio or balcony railing. Lit garland on a railing does more than you’d think.

Head south toward Fair Oaks Boulevard and the trees get taller. Arden Park’s sycamores and oaks arch right over the street, and here the trees are the show. In Sierra Oaks and Mariemont the lots get bigger and the houses sit farther back, so we start with the trees nearest the sidewalk and work back toward the house, instead of the other way around.

A good trunk wrap on a big oak or sycamore catches every set of headlights coming down the street. Each trunk gets wrapped up into the lower main limbs, tight and evenly spaced, so it reads as a neat spiral from the sidewalk instead of a tangle. Crape myrtles and Japanese maples wrap nicely too, and a matched pair flanking the front walk is hard to beat. We don’t wrap so tight that it pinches the bark, and we don’t climb anything that isn’t safe. We explain how we pick which trees to wrap on our tree wrapping page.

Up on the north side, Del Paso Manor has deep front lawns and a lot of long driveways, and that’s where stake lighting pays off. We line the drive and the front walk with stakes, and we mark every sprinkler head with a little flag first, then place stakes around them.

Deep lawns also put the outlet far from the action, so we route cords along bed edges where nobody trips and spread the load so one plug isn’t doing all the work.

A lot of these ranch houses have a covered front porch held up by square posts or round columns. Pillar wraps turn those plain posts into a warm, glowing entry. Add lit garland across the porch beam or down the step railing, and a wreath at the door or up under the gable peak, and the front of the house looks finished. We hang wreaths on hooks and clips, so there are no new holes in your siding or trim.

Ring us at (916) 313-4551 and we’ll chat about your roof, your trees and where the outdoor plugs are, then send over a free quote. Install day, our truck pulls up already loaded with bulbs, clips, ladders and timers, so there’s no hardware store run for you and no knotted box from the attic. Timers get set to click on near dusk and shut off around bedtime.

December wind and the odd chewed wire knock out a strand now and then. When that happens, phone us and a crew member swings by to fix it. After New Year’s, in January, we climb back up, pull every clip and bulb, and haul the whole lot away. Your garage stays bin-free and your eaves are bare long before spring.

Our trucks roll through Arden-Arcade on the way to Carmichael and Fair Oaks, and we’re back and forth to downtown Sacramento all season long. We light shops and offices along Watt and Howe too. To get on the calendar, send us a note through our contact page or call (916) 313-4551. And if you see our truck on your street, wave. We’ll wave back.