A post title inspired by a once-prominent blogger. Haha? My bad. I took a break from blogging, but I’m back with what I think is a pretty solid tutorial for you! Who doesn’t appreciate some outdoor lighting, huh?
After procrastinating for years, we finally installed outdoor lighting on our deck, and it. is. amazing. Not just that, but it’s incredibly simple and fairly budget-friendly to accomplish! So that’s why I’m here—to impart my outdoor lighting wisdom to you.
Items Required:
- A deck. This could be a patio. Or perhaps a porch? A surface with one wall?
- String lights. I suggest something industrial for better durability.
- Fence posts (we have 12 feet, trimmed down to 9 feet); I couldn’t find the exact one online, but I’ve linked a shorter version of the one we bought.
- Small carabiners for each attachment point on the house
- Eye hooks for drilling into the wall
- S hooks for each pole
- Cordless Drill
- Hacksaw (if you’re shortening your fence posts)
- Zip ties (in a similar style) to match your poles
Alright, let’s start with the basics. You’re going to want to decide on the arrangement of your lights. Zigzag, square around your area? It’s entirely your choice! I’m sharing some not-so-great photos of the actual supplies I utilized.
Clearly, there are various ways to hang the lights on the pole, but we chose to drill a small hole and insert the S Hook into it. It appears to be holding (remember, there is quite a bit of tension once they are in place), so I think it does the trick!
After we drilled the holes in the poles and inserted the S Hooks, we secured them to our deck railing. Since we have metal railings, we couldn’t drill into them. With a bit of luck, we decided to zip tie them onto the railings using 18-inch industrial ties.
Once we snipped off the ends, you can hardly see them on the railing. Totally worth it even if they are visible! 🙂
Then, use the eye hooks to drill into your house (sounds scarier than it really is!).
Attach the carabiner to the eye hook and then thread the light cord into the carabiner.
I recommend placing the hook quite high up—around 9 1/2 feet. This allows some leeway for the string lights to “swoop,” and you want to avoid anyone bumping their heads.
Honestly, the trickiest part of the entire project is determining the arrangement of the lights. I only had to adjust one hook after I drilled it into the wall, and it didn’t bother me much. People shouldn’t be scrutinizing your house walls anyway!
Here, you can see the transition from late afternoon to evening, and then to night.
Va-Va-VOOM!
I haven’t penned a tutorial in about 712 days, so I apologize if I missed something! Feel free to check out the video version of this on Instagram, where I’ve saved it to my stories. Good luck!
