“Shine bright like a diamond…” just kidding, kind of. Let me tell you, I have been wanting, nope needing, string lights in our backyard since we bought our house. So finally, I did the research, bought the stuff, and requested that all I wanted for Mother’s Day was to have a glass of wine under a romantic, string lit pergola. It happened! No, no, not on Mother’s Day (did you really expect that?) but a couple weeks later and it was worth the wait. There’s just something about the twinkle of those darn lights that make everything so relaxing.
Since I did a ton of research and my husband did an amazing job of stringing the lights, I thought I would report back here on what we used and what we found extremely helpful and what wasn’t so much.
Here are the supplies we used:
STEP 1:
This may be obvious, but first you will need to locate a source of power and develop the layout of the lights. This doesn’t have to be an exact plan but you should have a good idea of how many strings you want across your yard or how many times you want the lights to criss cross through your patio/pergola. You can always adjust as you go.
Make sure your electrical outlet can handle the number of strings you need to plug into it.
Tip: Most of the lights will only allow a certain number to be stringed together before it blows a fuse, so you may need more than one plug (I learned this the hard way a couple years ago when I thought I needed real, old school, glass Christmas lights on all of our eaves). Spoiler…it isn’t worth it.
STEP 2:
Order the supplies. I’m adding this as the second step so that you order the correct amount! Once you have a general layout, you can take some measurements and ensure you are ordering the right number of strands/feet per strand.
STEP 3:
Hang those bad boys! Luckily, we had a post on our patio that was already set up with an electrical outlet, so we decided that would be our “main” post. My husband used an eye bolt to screw into the top of that post, so that we only had a foot or so of cord to run up from the outlet.
Tip: If you buy glass bulbs, make sure you hang the strands prior to screwing the bulbs in. The chances of them hitting each other or something else and breaking is high!
I knew that I wanted to have three strands from that post over to our pergola. We sent the first strand to the closest corner of our pergola and then ran the strands back and forth, leaving a gap in between each strand. This is all personal preference. I “directed” while John moved them around to see what spacing I liked best.
Tip: When stringing the lights a long distance, make sure you string them tighter then you want them to hang. Once you add the glass bulbs, gravity will do its job. Also, if you live in a hot climate, the sun will cause them to stretch a bit.
Once we got to the middle of the pergola, we brought the strand back to the starting post. Then to the other corner and worked our way toward the middle again. It was perfect. If you have extra length in the strand, you can keep stringing to add more light or cap the remainder of the lights and hide the cord.
Above is a close up of the cable staples. They have a small nail on each side of the plastic, so you just place the cord in the middle of the plastic piece and hammer the nails in. I love how discrete they are and the nails are so small that they won’t do much damage if we ever need to take them down.
Tip: While you can staple in the middle of the lights (like shown above) it is much easier if you place the cable staple just before a light socket. So eyeball the appropriate “droop” and place the cable staple right before an empty light socket so that the socket holds tight against the staple to avoid any slipping.
There are so many ways to string these lights, you really just have to play with it and see what you like best. We did the zig zag triangle method, mainly because I wanted to have plenty to string back to the post on our patio, across the lawn.
Now grab a glass or wine, or champagne, or whiskey, or beer (that’s cool too, these lights make everything fancy) and get ready! If you like the daybed in the photos below, check out the free plans!
