We hang the Christmas lights you already keep in the garage: along the gutter line, over the porch rail, around the windows and through the shrubs. After New Year's we take them down again, and we can set up and later pack away the tree too . Our area is Cedar Mill, Beaverton, Bethany and the streets close by. Around Portland, light hanging usually runs $300-$1,500, labour only .
The person on the ladder is Slava, with 7 years of hands-on handyman work behind him.
What's part of a Christmas light installation visit?
A normal visit covers what people see from the street: the roofline and gutter edge, the peaks a ladder can reach, porch and deck rails, window frames, and the shrubs or small trees by the walk. Extension cords get run neatly along the siding to the outlet, and if you own a timer, we set it .
The clips need something solid to grab, so a gutter packed with fir needles is the first thing to deal with. If yours hasn't been cleaned this fall, we can do gutter cleaning before the strands go up .
In January the lights come down. Each strand gets coiled and tagged with where it hung, so next year's install goes quicker . What we don't do: sell or lease lights, store them, install permanent or hard-wired lighting , or haul anything away. Everything else we skip is on the what we don't do page.
What do people pay to get Christmas lights hung?
Figures below are Portland-area market data from November 2026, not a quote of ours.
| Work | Usual figure | Range | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hanging and later removing your holiday lights | about $600 | $300-$1,500 a job | labour only, lights not included |
| Setting up and later taking down a Christmas tree | around $200 | $120-$350 a job | labour only |
Size and shape of the house drive the figure. A long ranch roofline takes longer, a second story means a taller ladder, and each dormer adds runs. Wrapping shrubs, clearing a dirty gutter, or untangling a bin of half-dead strands all add hours too. Two visits (up in November, down in January) cost more than one. The lights themselves are yours to buy. See pricing for the hourly rate and the smallest visit we book.
Will you hang the lights I already own?
Yes, and that's really the point of this page. Many Portland lighting companies only put up the lights they sell or rent you. We work with whatever is in your bin .
A few things make it go smoothly: one type of LED strand per run, a bag of spare bulbs and fuses, clips if you already have some, and an outdoor timer. Older incandescent strings still work, though a cord that is cracked, chewed or wrapped in tape stays in the box. Before anything goes up we plug each strand in and check it . Strands that spent the year in a damp garage or a crawl space tend to be the ones that quit first once December rain sets in.
How do you attach lights to a roofline without damaging it?
Plastic clips do the job. They snap onto the gutter lip or slide under the bottom edge of the shingles, so nothing gets nailed, stapled or screwed into the roof, fascia or siding. A hole there is a place for water to get in, and our winters supply plenty of water .
Loose gutters show up a lot on this kind of visit. When a run sags or a hanger has pulled out, it's often a quick fix from the same ladder, and it's covered under gutter repair. Soft, dark fascia behind the gutter is a different job, wood rot repair, and we'll point it out rather than clip lights to it .
On the west side, plenty of composition roofs sit under Douglas firs and grow moss. When that surface is wet, we work from the ladder and stay off the roof . Big firs get lights on the lower trunk and branches we can reach, not the top .
How do I get power to my outdoor Christmas lights?
Use an outdoor outlet with the test and reset buttons on it (a GFCI). Run cords rated for outdoor use, keep the plug connections up off wet ground, and let the cord dip below the outlet before it climbs, so rain drips off instead of running in. Don't feed a cord through a door or window that will pinch it shut. A timer saves you from remembering every night.
If the outdoor outlet is dead, has no cover, or trips every time it rains, that's a repair on its own, covered under outlets and switches . We don't add new outlets or circuits for holiday lights.
Do you set up and take down the Christmas tree?
Yes, added to the lights visit or done on a short trip of its own . A real tree goes into its stand, straight and steady, and then the lights go on. An artificial one comes out of the box, gets put together and fluffed, then lit. In January it runs in reverse: lights off and coiled, the artificial tree back in its box, the real tree carried out of the house .
We don't haul, so the dry tree doesn't leave with us . The price is the tree row in the table above. Wreath hooks over a door or a garland on the mantel are small add-ons, and bigger hanging jobs live on hanging and mounting.
When should you book, and when do the lights come down?
In Portland, searches for Christmas light installation more than quadruple in November compared with an average month, and October already runs at over twice the usual level. So an October booking for a November install is the safer bet .
December days here are short and wet, which is why we pick a dry window for the climbing part when the forecast gives us one. Takedown is in early January, on a date we set when you book .