Holiday Lighting Installation in Hinsdale, IL

Engineered for the ice storm, not just the snow

Snow is not what takes a holiday display down in the southwest suburbs. Ice is. A freezing rain event glazes every strand, doubles its weight, and loads the clips. Then the wind picks up behind the front and a strand that was fine at four in the afternoon is on the lawn by morning. Hinsdale's exposed estate rooflines and mature trees make it worse: the big elevations catch the wind and the trees shed ice onto the roof.

• Tightened clip spacing on every exposed run, so an iced strand is carried by many points instead of a few
• Sealed connections at every plug and junction, so meltwater does not trip a circuit on the one night you have guests
• Commercial-grade LED strands cut to length, with no coiled slack to swing and no splice at the ridge to fail
• Attachment matched to the surface, because a clip that holds on asphalt shingle is not the clip that holds on a copper gutter lip

It is the difference between a display that looks right on install day and one that still looks right on New Year's Eve.

Slate, cedar, and copper, attached without a hole

Hinsdale has more slate and cedar shake per block than almost anywhere in the Chicago suburbs, and copper gutters to match. We do not drill, nail, screw, or staple into any of it. Roofline strands ride gutter clips on the copper lip or fascia clips behind the drip edge. On slate we never touch the slate, and crews do not walk it; we work from ladders with standoffs and from lifts on the tall elevations. On cedar shake the clip holds without splitting. When the display comes down in January there is nothing to patch, and the roof is as we found it.

Designed to the architecture

The right Hinsdale display is usually the one with the most restraint. Warm white along the main roofline and the front gables, garland with a bow on the entry, a wreath in every front window, one or two of the big oaks wrapped at the edge of the lot. The slate and the stone do the rest. Walk the streets around the Hinsdale Golf Club or along County Line Road in December and the houses that look right share that discipline.

That said, color is yours if you want it. Several Hinsdale clients run a warm white base with a team-color accent, Bears navy and orange on the columns for a game weekend, Blackhawks red on the entry, and switch it back for the holidays. We design it so it reads as deliberate rather than loud, and the strands are cut to the house so the base fit is right regardless of what color is on it.

What an estate install includes

• An on-site design walkthrough of every elevation, the drive, the entry, and the trees that carry the look
• Custom-cut, commercial-grade LED roofline lighting in warm white, cool white, or color
• Garland, wreaths, column wraps, tree wraps, lit urns, and landscape uplighting as the design calls for
• Installation by our crew, with timers set to local sunset and every connection sealed
• In-season service if a section goes dark, at no additional charge
• Takedown after the holidays on our ladders and lifts
• Labeled storage so next season is a re-hang of the same design, with any additions

The January takedown is where people get hurt

Nobody falls off a Hinsdale roof in November. They fall in January, when the copper gutters are full of ice, the slate is glazed, and the lights have to come down anyway. That is the half of the job we most want you to hand over. Our takedown crews run through the winter on days the roof is safe to work from the ladder and the lift. We pull the display, coil and label every strand with your name, and store it until next fall. If an ice week pushes your date, we tell you and reschedule. We do not send a crew onto an iced slate roof, and we would rather you did not go up there either.

If you would rather be out of the annual install and takedown entirely, we also install permanent LED roofline systems that mount to the fascia, never the slate, and switch to holiday or team color from an app.

Historic homes and the newer builds, handled differently

Hinsdale is not one kind of house. The older streets near the train station and Robbins Park have 1920s Tudors and colonials with original slate and trim, and those get the lightest possible touch: reversible attachment, no weight on the roof, and a design that defers to the architecture. The newer estate builds toward Oak Brook and along the county line have composite trim, standing-seam accents, and long horizontal rooflines that can carry a bolder run of light. We walk every house before anything is specified, and the plan is written for that house, not pulled from a package.

Where we install in and around Hinsdale

Hinsdale · Hinsdale Golf Club area · Oak Brook · Burr Ridge · Clarendon Hills · Western Springs and La Grange · Downers Grove · Westmont · Willowbrook · Darien · Woodridge

The Hinsdale service-area page covers everything we do here year-round, and the holiday lighting page covers the seasonal service in detail.

Plan your Hinsdale display

Estate rooflines take design time and crew days. The earlier we walk the property, the more say you have in your date. Call (708) 742-8356 or use the contact form and we will follow up with next steps.