One of the best parts of Christmas is walking around and seeing all the cheerful holiday decor.
Outdoor holiday decor can be classy, funny, simple, quirky, and everything in between, depending on who owns the houses! Unfortunately, it can also be repetitive, especially if you don’t look for creative ways to stand out.
If you want to have the merriest house on the block, shine a jolly light on your home with these Christmas curtain light ideas for your home!
1. Fringed Gutters
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One of the best ways to use curtain Christmas lights is to hang them from roofs, like a sparkling fringe for your gutters! This gives your roof a clear outline and effortlessly bedazzles your home. This style works best for short curtain lights and looks amazing when you match its color with the other lights in your holiday decor.
2. Hedge Blankets
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If you’re in the habit of lovingly shaping, caring, and tending to hedges and bushes, don’t let your hard work go to waste! You can highlight them at night by molding solar-powered or battery-powered lights to their shape. This shows off your garden and brightens up your home without having to use loads of lights.
3. Curtained Arches
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Garden arches look fantastic with delicate sheers fluttering in the wind. To add to that holiday feel, you can use your curtain lights instead! Hanging long outdoor string lights from arches can even be treated as a regular curtain, tying the light strands to the side or draping it to give it a magical touch.
4. Dreamy Sheer Curtains
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Looking for something dreamy for your home? If any of your outdoor living areas, like porches, patios, or decks, have sheer curtains hung up, you can elevate it by adding in your Christmas lights. Doing this also diffuses the light much more gently at night and looks lovely in the wind.
5. Lit Up Frame
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A fantastic way of installing fairy lights is by using them to highlight the frame or structure of any outdoor space. If you have a gazebo or a covered deck, attach the lights by following the lines of its frame for an incredible light display. This dresses up the space and easily matches all types of Yuletide decor.
6. Privacy Lights
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With Christmas comes back-to-back holiday parties and special events — some of which you might be hosting! To help guests feel more comfortable talking with one another, hang dense layers of curtain lights from ceilings and wires to separate the different areas of your yard. This displays the feeling of privacy while keeping your yard freely flowing.
7. Shining Railing
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A simple way of cheering up your home is by installing lights from your balcony and deck railings. By doing this, you’ll kill two birds with one stone by dressing it up for Christmas and making the railings more visible at night. It’s a visitor-friendly addition that keeps things safe and stylish!
8. Starry Entrance
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Christmas isn’t complete without some stars! If you want to jazz up your entrance with some curtain lights but want a more unique take on it, look for star-shaped lights. Decorating your entrance with these delicate lights gives your home the perfect amount of charm, especially if you don’t have a large backyard.
9. Dazzling Window Planters
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If you're looking for creative lighting ideas, how about using your planters? If you're fortunate enough to have planter boxes outside of your windows, balconies, or porches, accessorize it with some pretty holiday curtain lights! Fitting them around your planter boxes or even threading them through your winter plants is a clever way to add both light and dimension to the area.
10. Origami Lantern Drapes
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Although the basic Christmas lights use tiny twinkling bulbs, you can level it up by adding some paper lantern fairy lights to your design! Alternate your curtain lights with lantern string lights to add more dimension and character to the space. This looks especially charming when draped across your ceiling!
11. Twinkling Messages
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Are you a fan of interesting lettering and typography? If so, this idea might interest you! By strategically organizing your 3D twinkle lights to form letters and words, you can send some literal messages to anyone passing by your house. This kind of statement piece is also an undeniably unique feature in your decor.
12. Layered Stars
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Everyone loves looking up at the stars! Have some starry skies every night by stringing your curtain lights across your backyard in several layers. Since curtain lights hang freely, it’ll give the area dynamic lighting that shifts and changes with the wind. Overall, it’ll look like a permanent meteor shower over your garden.
13. Cramped and Jolly
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Minimalism is lovely but, sometimes, we need to go extra! Houses that look like they’re bursting at the seams with holiday cheer are always delightful to see. If you want a yard overflowing with Christmas decor in all the best ways, remember to use curtain lights with a lovely glow to border your property as a cheeky finishing touch.
14. Climbing Lights
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Are you one of those gardeners who tended to beautiful climbing plants during the growing season and was sad to see it go when winter arrived? If so, you might have some unused trellises laying around. Take advantage of that and replace your vines with some holiday lights hanging from these structures!
15. Porch Fringe Lights
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Another festive take on holiday lighting is to wrap your Christmas ball lights around your posts. Doing this highlights the area and gives it a more whimsical appeal that’s great for staying jolly. It may be simple but it’s very striking, especially when paired with more curtain lights hanging by the gutters.
16. Mixed With Tinsel
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Traditional Christmas decor uses tinsel just as much as lights. You can use these two staples together in your design by attaching holiday-themed foil curtains to outdoor walls and entryways before layering them with your favorite curtain lights. These adorable lights will brighten up outdoor areas and are fantastic for Christmas parties!
17. Fences and Sparkles
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With how pricey fencing can be, it’s definitely one feature that you wouldn't want to be ignored during the holidays. To highlight them and keep them on the merry theme, just hang up some Christmas globe lights! We recommend finding curtain lights that match your fence height for a more put-together final look.
18. Delicate Window Curtains
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While Christmas can have the loud and bright decor in some homes, don’t ignore designs that focus on the little touches! These delicate little mini lights are hung from the top of a window and connected to swinging shutters, forming a canopy of fairy lights. This minimalist window lighting is a little detail that can add lots of personality to a design.
19. Starfall Yard
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Want a canopy of twinkle lights? Large garden trees look incredible and can add so much character to your home and backyard. There are tons of approaches to decorate these trees for Christmas and one way is to hang streams of curtain light sets from branches of trees, making it look like stars are raining down on your front yard.
20 Deck the Lights
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Outdoor living areas are must-haves for any home and deserve to be outfitted for the season! A clever decor approach and backyard makeover are to drape curtain lights or big-bulbed string lights all over the space, from the ceiling and down any walls. Doing this can also help you ease into holiday decorating and kickstart your creativity for the season!
21. Starry Lantern Wall
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If you love the stars but want a creative way to show them, try attaching some gorgeous DIY 3-dimensional stars to your curtain lights. It could take some time to complete but, by the end of it, you'll have a stunning wall of stars that’ll be completely unique to your home.
22. Covered in Lights
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On the off-chance that you’ve somehow found yourself with more Christmas curtain lights than you know what to do with, go the extra mile with it! Use up all of them to blanket your home with lovely multi-colored fairy lights. This brilliant idea can also help your home stand out without any other added decor.
23. String Light Tent
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Add some cover to your garden with this tent made entirely of light! Anchor your Christmas lights from a tall point and attach the ends of each strand to your garden or a fence. This looks best with a dense light cover and is a new way to brighten up your yard.
24. Colorful Stars
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Another starry idea includes using colorful curtain lights! Hang these lights anywhere around your home to give off a playful impression and make your home look more inviting. Personally, we love hanging these from entryways to quickly give guests an idea of what to expect when they come inside your home.
25. Simply Ornamental
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Stay simple while taking your lights to the next level by sticking on some lovely Christmas ornaments. When you do this, you add a sophisticated glow to your home. It’s incredibly interesting to look at, especially if you use reflective ornaments and hang these lights around your favorite outdoor hangouts.
26. Garlands and Pendants
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Adding texture to your lights can go a long way and help you make a lasting impression on guests. Our favorite texture trick is to attach Christmas garlands and pendant lights to the curtain lights. Doing this guarantees that your holiday decor will look like a fairytale landscape come true.
27. Floating Walls
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Make a bigger impact with your open-walled outdoor living areas using some illusion walls. All you need to do is attach curtain lights to the ceiling and let them hang low enough to cover the top half of the area to make a wall of string lights. This is a captivating sight that gives a romantic vibe and effortlessly calls everyone to appreciate it!
28. Glowing Rails
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Another way to light up your home is by making your railing glow. You can hang a wide variety of curtain lights from a tall wall and then secure each strand to your deck or porch railing. This makes it look like a dazzling wall that simultaneously casts a cozy glow on the area.
29. Floating Flames
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You can never have too much light, especially during the holidays! Stay classy with your lighting and get yourself some electric candles. Installing these together with your Christmas curtain lights gives the space wonderful depth and dimension. It's eye-catching, beautiful, and gives off a romantic feeling that’s great for love-filled Christmases.
30. Garden Tree Draping
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Trees that survive the winter with full leaves deserve to be appreciated! Give it some life by draping your curtain lights all over its branches. This works best to highlight the impressive size and shape of your large trees and give your garden a lovely centerpiece full of holiday cheer.
31. Luminous Vines
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Did you know that if you bunch together a few strands from your curtain lights, they start to look like vines? This quickly elevates your Yuletide lighting while staying unique and elegant. This would look wonderful around gorgeous trellises, planters, and arches, and will give you a luminescent winter garden.
32. Invisible Fairy Trails
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Using wire and strategic placements, your curtain lights can look like twinkling fairy trails floating around your home. All you have to do is hang them haphazardly on wires in a dark part of your yard before lighting it up at night. This fascinates your younger guests, especially when your lights are in blinking mode!
33. Brilliant Arches
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If you have thick arches in your garden, lay your lights flat across its structure before securing them to the arc structure. If done properly, it looks like a golden rainbow in your yard! This helps your different garden features stay visible at night and makes for a fantastic background to your other holiday decor.
34. Radiant Fountains
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While fountains and wells look magical in the day, they start to be invisible when it gets dark. Highlight these features with lights draped across its structure. After hanging your curtain lights all over its sidewalls, you'll have yourself a wonderful holiday centerpiece that makes your garden look unreal at night!
35. Red Twinkles
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Although warm and cool-toned Christmas curtain lights are the most common, these lights can also come in a variety of colors. For this season, consider using bright and festive red lights instead! These will add more warmth and ambiance to an area while looking wonderful spread out across your yard.
36. Curtain Accents
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It’s not a problem if you don't have enough curtain lights to cover your house! Instead, you can be strategic and only attach it to specific details that you want to highlight, such as simple doorways or light fixtures. Add these to conversation starters and anything you want your guests to notice.
37. Canopy Stars
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How do you feel about staying under a canopy made entirely of lights? Loosely hang your string lights from a circular centerpiece and create a galaxy to hover over your garden. This helps your outdoor spaces feel more intimate and comfortable while still giving guests a view of the night sky.
38. Christmas Car Lights
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If you're someone who has an unused car lying around your home because you can't store it for the winter, incorporate it into your design. Dress it up with some pretty Christmas lights and holiday-themed decorations. This keeps your home merry and neat, even with a car you’re not using stuck in your yard!
39. Twinkling Trees
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Scattering modern illusion Christmas trees around your garden elevate your yard and are easy to appreciate. This is a smaller-scale version of the Canopy Stars idea and should be much more manageable to accomplish. This is great for empty spaces in your yard that need a little bit more pizazz.
40. Trunk Wrapped Pixies
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Since Christmas lights are also called fairy lights, if you wrap them around tree trunks, it starts to look like pixies live in them! this looks wonderful will all kinds of trees and is a great alternative design if your tree is too tall for you to decorate around its branches.
41. Bright Tree Lines
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It's not uncommon for snowy areas to have bare trees during the winter. In these cases, you can lean into it and outline your tree with reliable outdoor LED strip lights while hanging your curtain lights from its branches. This makes your naked trees look ready for the season of merriment!
42. Gingerbread House Lighting
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Don't forget the power of colorful Christmas lights! Instead of letting the multicolored strands of your curtain lights hang down from near the gutters, try bunching up the strands to form a thick line. This outlines the shape of your roof and makes your home look like a real-life gingerbread house!
43. Ceiling Drapes
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Exposed beams are not only a gorgeous feature in homes, but it also gives you lots of opportunities to be creative. Take advantage of this by hanging your lights from each beam like ceiling drapes. This gives the area a decadent look that's perfect for the warmth of Christmas time.
44. Rooftop Lights
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If you want to use everything at your disposal, don’t forget about your rooftop! Many people ignore this empty real estate when laying out their holiday decor but that’s a huge mistake. Decorating your roof allows you to use your lights to form pictures and write messages that show off your personality.
45. Miniature Fencing
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Not every fence is tall— some that are just meant to border your home or outline walkways can be shorter than your knees! To make these miniature fences more Christmas-appropriate, you can rely on short Christmas curtain lights. Attaching these lights help tie in your decor and ensures your space looks cohesive.
46. Draped Skies
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With some wires, you can hang up twinkling ceiling drapes wherever you want, even under an open sky. We love to line our pathways with this technique to stay safe at night and lead guests to where they need to go. Just imagine walking through your garden under these gorgeous lights— isn’t it lovely?
47. All Flagged Up
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Stringing flags across spaces is a universal way of showing off your festive spirit and you can do this in your home too! After attaching your Christmas lights over your yard, contrast them with colorful flaglets in between each row of lights. This adds texture and movement to your garden and makes your home more welcoming.
48. Gold Details
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Gold is an important part of the Christmas story and it could be a key feature in your holiday decor too! No matter where you choose to hang your lights, adding a few gold details will help it look chic and classy. Gold works best with warm lights but silver is better for cool-toned Christmas lights.
49. Pond Outlines
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Christmas time brings with it long nights and it can be an issue if the dark starts to hide your ponds and pools from sight. Lighting will make it safer and, to match the holiday theme, consider adding in some extra curtain lights to outline the shape of your water features at night!
50. Modern Tree Pendants
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Perhaps you want to decorate your trees but don’t want to cover it all over with lights. In that case, one of the many ways to work around this is to use your curtain lights like large hanging ornaments and pendants. This method can also give your house a very modern minimalist look.
51. Cheerful Arbor
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Arbors are gorgeous garden features that easily catch people’s eyes. During the most wonderful time of the year, give it a dose of holiday cheer with your lights! Hang them from your arbor like a curtain or thread it through any trellis details to help it better match the season’s vibe.
52. Outdoor Chandelier
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Enhance any exposed outdoor living areas with an outdoor chandelier. Simply float a circular hoop above the ground using strong wires. Your curtain lights should be hanging from the hoop on one end then attached somewhere else on the other end. This stunning statement piece also gives off tons of brightness.
53. The Merriest Colors
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If all you have on hand are standard curtain lights but want more vibrancy, give it some color! There are lots of DIY hacks that can help you securely and safely add color to your standard twinkling lights. This helps you customize your design to fit and match your vision exactly.
54. Themed Lights
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Is Christmas ever complete without seeing some holiday-themed lights? These candy cane lights look darling beside the curtain lights! Not only are these easy to find, but they also easily go along with the holiday decor you might already have. If candy canes aren’t your thing, you could try other holiday-shaped lights instead.
55. Frosted Facade
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Snow-covered landscapes are a Christmas staple but what if it doesn't snow in your area? Fortunately, you can still get that icy look using your holiday lights. Get icy white curtain lights and cover your facade with them. This leaves your home with a frosted look, almost like you had a snow day every day!
56. Trellis Lights
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Does your backyard fence have some trellis details for privacy? While the winter may have prevented you from benefiting from your trellis plant shield, you can still add more privacy using your Christmas lights. Densely hang your lights to cover the open trellis holes and keep your home safe from prying eyes.
57. Dreamy Neon Tree
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This neon-covered tree looks like a giant mushroom from a fairytale! This extravagant tree light decor style will, without a doubt, go fantastic with humorous holiday decor. If you cover your entire tree with these lights, especially using red and green lights, you’ll have the jolliest home in the neighborhood.
58. Beaded Lights
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These special Christmas lights have been mixed in with delicate glass beads. The tiny bulbs are camouflaged in this beaded curtain and look radiant all day, whether the sun’s out or not. The glass beads themselves also give it a magical glow that's hard to replicate with standard fairy lights.
59. White Christmas
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No matter how much you dream of a white Christmas, you don’t know if you’ll have snowfall by Christmas day— but that shouldn’t stop you! Create a white Christmas landscape with some white cardboard tree cutouts to imitate a snow-covered forest and hang bright white curtain lights above it to imitate snowfall.
60. Mixing Lights
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Cohesion is the key to design but that doesn’t mean that variety should be ignored. Pair your curtain lights with complementary fixtures that can work together to elevate your home. One example is by attaching short curtain lights to your roof edges and lining them with large and colorful string lights!
61. Pergola Walls
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This pergola-covered pathway is decked out in long curtain lights. This acts like walls for your pergola and can help guide your guests to stay focused on what’s inside rather than being distracted by what’s outside. This is particularly useful if you expect new guests but aren't ready with the rest of your yard just yet.
62. Lantern Ornaments
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If you want the nostalgia of traditional Christmases, use classic light fixtures! Mix up your Christmas curtain lights with metal and glass lanterns scattered around them. Doing this helps give your space an old-time charm while still looking modern. Our experience has also shown that this style looks best hanging from trees.
63. Strategic Garlands
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If there are any areas in your home that you don't want guests in, strategically cover them up with your Christmas light garlands! This indoor-outdoor technique uses hanging lights to block visitors from anything off-limits. Similarly, purposefully leaving some light strands set aside can guide people to places and things they’re free to access.
64. Colorful Gables
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For some reason, many people forget to decorate their gables — don’t be like them! You can miss a lot of opportunities to add character to your home if you leave your gables blank. Instead of keeping them empty, attach some colorful Christmas curtain lights to them for a more charming curb appeal.
65. Spotlight
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Contrasting colors are a fantastic way to bring the eye to specific design features. We do this by using cool-colored curtain lights all over an area before placing a warm-colored centerpiece in the middle. This easily captures attention and can be used to highlight whatever you think your neighbors and guests should know and see.
66. Star of the Show
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Although this Christmas star steals the scene, it’s enhanced by its curtain light backdrop and gives it interesting texture and dimension. To add more meaning to it, you can include star lantern building crafts in your family activities, making sure to use the results of your sessions in your holiday design.
67. Flower Bulbs
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Although stars, angels, and candy canes are common details in Christmas decor, give flower-shaped curtain lights a chance! This adds a feminine touch to your space and makes any area look lovelier than before. Use these as you would standard Christmas lights, just don’t be surprised if the area looks more refined than before!
68. Fluttering Florals
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This takes on a different approach to flower-shaped lights. Instead of using hard plastic bulbs, the flowers in these curtain lights are made with soft and vivid cloth. Not only does this make a space slightly more feminine, but it also adds a lovely pop of color and softens the whole area.
69. Prism Curtains
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What happens when light rays meet prisms? They create entrancing rainbow patterns! For that reason, your Christmas curtain lights would look stunning hanging alongside prism curtains. Additionally, if you position it for the sun to hit it just right, you could have rainbows in your outdoor space all day and all night long!
70. Blinking Christmas Tree
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These lights are attached to a tree with each strand fanned out, imitating the shape of a Christmas tree! This is a space-saving outdoor Christmas tree feature and can be attached to your walls, fences, or posts too. This approach works with the space you have and, if done well, can become a feature piece in your yard!
In Summary
Isn’t there so much you can do to hang your Christmas curtain lights outdoors? The 70 ideas we gave are just the tip of the iceberg— the sky is the limit!
As you get into the holiday spirit and start preparing your outdoor decor, we want to remind you to be as creative as can be. Although we have our favorites from this list, what you do is ultimately up to you, whether you modify, combine, or replicate the ideas you saw.
As long as you go with the design that makes you jolly, you’ll be all right!