Do you have any tips on measuring for how many feet of lights I'll need?
We hear this question often during the Christas Season.
After choosing the color and style of Christmas lights to install along your roofline, before purchasing, the next best step is measuing how many feet of light will be needed for the project.
We'd like to propose two ways to measure your home's roofline
The most accurate method: Use a measuring tape.
This makes good common sense.
Pretty simple, measure along the roofline either directly at the edge between two people on ladders, along the ground under the roofline, or while walking along the ground with a rolling measure under the roofline edge. These are all fairy precise ways of measuring for your project.
Always thinking, I've put years of math education and a childhood love of scale models and a little mountaineering experience to propose a way to estimate (or shall we say guestimate) the length of your roofline elevations.
This afternoon's conversation:
Me: "Dave, they could make fun of me for proposing this...."
David: "They'll either laugh, roll their eyes, or try it. Either way, you're golden. Just take the photos and print it."
Christmas Light Guestimation Process
A couple of nights ago, we were installing C9 glass and LED bulbs on this short run of roofline on our house and was standing back taking photos when I realized that I could use that short piece of roofline to "measure" the other lengths of roofline in my field of vision.
I made a quick measurement with my fingers. We can see by counting the bulbs that the distance is about 23 feet - let's round to 25.
Note, I'm in my neighbor's yard to make sure I have a good view of the side of the house without moving. Note, the minute you move, you have to "re-measure" the distance of the measured side. (Put a rock on the ground where you are standing if you have to step away.)
Then, I used the same width to estimate the length of the side of the house. With my guestimation, I estimated that the side of the house was about 30 feet. It's actually right at about 30 feet give or take a couple of feet.
That's close enough! Round up when making a final figure and it should be close enough for you. (We used to say "close enough for government work" when I was an engineer!) Add 10-15% to the final number.
Today, I thought I'd bring a little more "precision" to the process.
I enlisted the help of the family.
Meet Jack.
Let's measure Jack. He's about 6 feet tall. (He's actually 5'10.5 but he prefers we round up. He's 15. He's hoping for 2-3 more inches!)
Standing back, we see Jack makes the perfect scale unit.
Not using an iPhone to photograph the process would make this easier. We see that this section of roofline is a little more than 3 "Jacks".
After seeing that the distance is about 3 jacks, I rounded up to 20 which is roughly equivalent to the length of the front span of roofline.
Then the roofline itself becomes a 20-foot measure. Use that distance to measure other lines on the house.
To be more "precise" (😂) Use a short ruler - like this sewing ruler - to measure your object and repeat. That might even be more accurate since you don't have to account for the size of your fingers.
On your own house, repeat the process until you've added up all the different angels you plan to outline.
We usually add at least 10% to the measurements we make along a roofline to account for the pitch of the roof and any swag.
We hope this method is helpful. Thanks for asking us for Christmas lights advice and keep the questions coming.
Post was originally published. Images updated and text tweaked on September 28, 2024.