Brick Fronts: Attaching Holiday Lights Without Drilling Mortar
Walk any street in Bridgeland, Fairfield or Cypress Creek Lakes and you’ll see brick and stone fronts on most of the houses. Masonry looks great lit at night, but it’s also the part of a home people most often damage when hanging lights: a few plastic anchors drilled into mortar, a nail driven into a joint, and the holes are there long after the holidays. The good news is that brick rarely needs a single hole to look beautifully lit.
Why not drill?
Every hole in mortar is a place for water to get in, and repeated drilling year after year weakens the joints. Removing anchors can chip brick faces or leave visible scars that are hard to patch to match. On a newer home, it can also raise questions with a builder about the exterior. There are simpler ways.
Attach to the roof edge, not the wall
On most brick homes, the roofline is the main event, and that’s not brick at all. Gutters and shingle edges take clips without any drilling. Outlining the eaves and gables gives a brick home its shape at night, and the brick below catches the glow.
Brick clips
For lights that need to run across the brick itself, say, framing a window or outlining a brick column, brick clips grip the edges of an individual brick by tension. They work on brick with recessed mortar joints, where there’s a lip for the clip to hold. Spacing them evenly along a course of brick keeps the line straight. On smooth, flush-joint brick or natural stone, they may not hold, and other approaches work better.
Other non-drilling options
- Window and door trim: wood or composite trim around openings can carry lights with clips designed for trim edges.
- Light from the ground: washing brick with light from below, rather than attaching to it, shows off the texture of the masonry. Many homes already have landscape lighting doing this.
- Wreaths and garland: hung from the door frame, a window hook or the top of a column rather than fastened into masonry.
Where lights look best on brick
Brick has its own rich color, especially under warm light. Warm white along the roofline lets the brick below glow red and amber; cool white can make it look gray and flat. Rather than covering brick walls with strands, frame the features: windows, the entry arch, columns and the garage. A few well-placed elements look more intentional than a wall of lights.
Stone and mixed facades
Many newer Cypress homes combine brick with stone accents around the entry or on a turret. Natural stone has irregular edges that clips don’t grip reliably. For those areas, it’s usually better to light the stone from below and keep holiday strands on the roof edge and trim. See our article on two-story peaks for the rooflines above.
Power on brick homes
Outdoor outlets on brick homes are often on the wall near the front door or in the garage. Running cords neatly along the bottom edge of the wall, behind shrubs, and up at a corner keeps them out of sight without any fasteners in the brick.
How Majestic installs on brick
We don’t drill brick or mortar for holiday lighting. You buy your lights from Majestic and pay for installation labor; from year two on, you pay labor only, because the lights are already yours and the same non-drilling attachment goes back each year. Our lifetime warranty on Christmas lighting products means any broken parts are replaced each year you sign up for installation. A 65% deposit reserves your install date. Calendars fill in November, so book early. See Christmas light installation in Cypress, or our work in Fairfield.
Brick lighting questions
Can you hang Christmas lights on brick without drilling?
Yes, with brick clips, trim clips or by attaching to the roof edge instead of the wall.
Do brick clips work on every house?
They need recessed mortar joints to grip. Flush joints and natural stone need other approaches.
What color looks best on red brick?
Warm white makes brick glow; cool white can make it look gray.
Should I light the whole brick wall?
Framing windows, the entry and columns usually looks better than covering the wall.