Tips for Your Home’s Holiday Lighting | Meyer Electrical Services, Inc.

The holidays are just around the corner, and you’ve been thinking of decorating your home with holiday lighting. This article will discuss typical issues and tips to get you ready. For the best results and safety, work with an experienced and licensed electrician.

Typical Holiday Electrical Issues

You may have had circuit breakers tripping when you turned on the holiday lighting last year. That indicates you had an overloaded circuit. A simple solution is adding more outlets in your home’s eaves. This will help prevent overloading circuit breakers and eliminate extension cords. Another way to fix tripping breakers is using LED lighting, instead of incandescent lights that require a much greater electrical load.

You may be living in a region that experiences all sorts of wintry weather, rain, snow, and sleet. Exterior holiday lighting will be exposed to the elements, including moisture. Safety experts recommend that they be plugged into GFCI circuits properly.

Every 15 and 20 amp 120 volt receptacle that is installed outside needs GFCI protection by a breaker or outlet. Each exterior receptacle that is located in an area that may become wet due to the weather or runoff is required to have a cover that makes it weatherproof in order to protect the outlet when a cord is plugged.

Types of Holiday Lighting

As you may be aware, holiday lighting has greatly evolved from just having bulbs on a string. There are now lights in the shapes of icicles, bubbles, snowflakes, etc. Some lights are fiber optic, multicolored, LED, incandescent, white, neon, and more. They can also be put on timers that allow you to create artistic effects.

The tremendous variety of lights and lighting gear may make it a challenge to choose what will be best for your home. Believe it or not, there are holiday lighting experts that can lend you a hand in deciding the best way to decorate your home for the holidays.

Electrical Services You Can Trust Founded in 1991, Meyer Electrical Services provides home and commercial electrical services in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., where we are licensed and insured. Based in Bethesda, our team proudly serves all of Montgomery County. Receive a free consultation for custom electrical work today by calling (301) 941-1400.