How to Hang Mini Christmas Lights Indoors

Hanging strings of Christmas lights, whether big, vintage bulbs or delicate, miniature lights is a straightforward yet highly effective way to make a room look festive and full of holiday joy. That joy might be diminished if you try hanging Christmas lights indoors without the necessary preparation or the appropriate tools and notions.

Proper planning, which should only take a few minutes, will ensure you don't end up having to rehang the lights to get the desired effect. It's also important to use hanging notions and tools that don't damage your walls and that remain as invisible as possible. This is especially important when you're putting up tiny Christmas lights, which call for smaller-scale hanging hardware.

Before using any tools or hardware for hanging Christmas lights indoors, do a test run by hanging the lights with low-tack painters' tape. This tape is strong enough to temporarily hold up miniature Christmas lights yet easy to remove without damaging your walls or other surfaces. Create your desired arrangement of lights and place strips of painters' tape at approximately arm's length apart to hold them up.

This step helps you make sure you have a sufficient length of lights, possibly by joining multiple strings together, and that the effect of the lights is as you desire. With plug-in lights, make sure that the plug safely reaches an electrical outlet or extension cord. With battery-powered lights, use this test run to find the best place to hide the battery pack. This preparation step also helps you figure out the best places to put the hanging hardware when you move on to the next step.

The best hardware for hanging Christmas lights indoors will depend on whether or not you're comfortable making small holes in your walls or other surfaces. If you're OK with tiny holes, place thumbtacks or pushpins into the wall at regular intervals along the string of lights. Don't push the pins through the wire; instead, push them directly into the wall and wrap the wires over or around the pins. Use thumbtacks or pushpins in an inconspicuous color and if possible, place them in inconspicuous spots.

Some more elaborate approaches to hanging Christmas lights indoors can add weight to the strings. For example, you might hang photos or ornaments from the strings. In this case, opt for a hammer and nails or a staple gun instead of the pins, which might not be secure enough for a heavier arrangement.

Keep the lights unplugged while you put up the hardware and never put nails, pins or staples directly through the wires.

If you don't want to make holes in your walls or other surfaces, hang tiny Christmas lights using damage-free adhesive hooks, which are widely available in hardware, craft and general stores. Follow the instructions on the packaging, which will generally involve pressing an adhesive strip onto the wall and pressing the hook onto the strip. Some of these hooks are designed for use on the ceiling, so look for those if you want to hang lights from the ceiling. Note that these types of adhesive hooks are easy to remove when you're ready to take down the lights.

Another hole-free option is to choose an arrangement that drapes the lights around an architectural feature or piece of furniture. This could be a door frame, picture frame, window frame, fireplace mantel, banister, bookshelf or curtain rail. With this option, you can hide any necessary holes in an unseen spot or use small strips of painters' tape, binder clips or twist-ties in a few subtle places.