Christmas lights in Knoxville

Lighting Knoxville's older neighborhoods

A lot of Knoxville houses have more rooflines than they first appear to. In Sequoyah Hills, the Tudor and Georgian revival homes off Cherokee Boulevard have steep front gables, side wings and chimneys that look best when each line is outlined on its own. In Fourth and Gill, the Queen Anne and Craftsman houses built between the 1880s and the 1930s are all porches and peaks, and a simple warm white outline makes the trim work stand out at night.

West Hills is the opposite. It was Knoxville's first big subdivision after World War II, and the brick ranches there have one long, low eave line. A single run of evenly spaced C9s across that eave, with the porch and garage done to match, looks clean from the street. Up in Holston Hills, around the old golf course, the big stone and brick two-stories can carry a lot more: peaks, dormers and the trees in the yard.

When do Knoxville homes usually light up?

Downtown's tree goes up on Market Square for the Regal Celebration of Lights, usually the Friday after Thanksgiving, and plenty of people want their own house lit by that weekend. If that's you, call in the fall. Install dates around Thanksgiving fill first.

Does Knoxville weather matter?

It does. December here averages a low right around freezing and about five inches of rain, more cold rain than snow. That's why every install comes with free service calls: if a storm knocks a section loose on Kingston Pike or in North Knox, we come fix it. Knoxville has had snow on Christmas Day only a dozen or so times since the 1880s, so most years it's the lights doing the work.