Timing & Booking
Book in November, Get Lit in December. Here's Why.
October 19, 2026
The install season in Summit County is not three months long. It is closer to six weeks, and weather routinely takes a chunk out of the middle of it. Crews can start hanging lights once roofs are clear and temperatures are workable, usually sometime in October, and the work has to be finished before the serious snow settles in for good. Everything in between is the window. When a homeowner in Frisco or a property manager in Keystone calls in mid-November expecting lights by Thanksgiving, the honest answer is often a date in December — and the reason has less to do with how busy anyone is than with how little usable time the mountains hand out.
Daylight disappears faster than most people plan for
In early October, a crew working in Silverthorne has roughly eleven and a half hours between sunrise and sunset. By the first week of December, that is down to about nine and a half, and the practical working day is shorter still. Light hits a west-facing roof in Breckenridge late and leaves it early because the ridgelines block it on both ends. Frost on a steep pitch at 9,600 feet does not burn off until the sun has been on it a while. A crew that could stage, design, and finish two homes in an October day may finish one in December.
That is not a scheduling preference. It is arithmetic. Every week the calendar moves toward the solstice, the same crew completes fewer jobs, which means the jobs booked behind them slide further out.
Snow does not just slow the work — it stops it
Standing-seam metal roofs are everywhere up here, and they are the reason a lot of the timing is non-negotiable. We attach to metal roofs with clamps designed for the seam profile, because adhesives fail in cold and anything that penetrates the panel is a leak waiting for spring. Setting those clamps correctly takes hands, judgment, and a surface that is not sheeted in ice. Once snow loads onto a metal roof it releases in slabs. Nobody is up there, and nobody should be.
Asphalt shingle roofs in Dillon and the older parts of Frisco give a little more latitude, but not much. Clip-and-line work on a frozen shingle is slower and harder on materials. Ice dam ridges at the eave change where a line can run. A crew that planned a two-hour roofline ends up re-routing on the spot.
So the schedule is built around a simple rule: roof work goes first, ground work goes later. Wreaths, trees, railings, and landscape lighting can be installed in conditions that would shut down roof access entirely. If you book late, there is a real chance your display goes up in two visits — ground elements first, roofline when a clear stretch opens up.
What actually fills the calendar before yours
A few things take priority slots for reasons that are structural, not favoritism:
- Commercial properties. Lodges, restaurants, and retail along Main Street in Breckenridge and Frisco need to be lit before their guests arrive, and their displays are large. One commercial job can consume what three residential jobs would.
- Returning clients. Properties with stored materials and a design already on file get scheduled first because the work is predictable.
- Short-term rentals. Owners with bookings starting the week of Thanksgiving have a hard deadline that cannot move.
- Weather make-up days. Every storm that closes a day pushes that day's jobs into the next clear one, and the next clear one already had jobs on it.
That last item is the one people underestimate. Two storm days in late November do not cost two days. They cost two days plus the ripple through everything scheduled behind them.
Wind and elevation add time to the install itself
A lakeside property in Dillon or a ridge lot above Silverthorne needs tighter attachment intervals than a sheltered home in a Frisco neighborhood. Clips go closer together, every connection gets secured, and the crew spends more time per linear foot. Copper Mountain sits at 9,712 feet and gets weather that would be considered a storm anywhere else. These are not upcharges in time for their own sake — they are what keeps a display attached in February instead of flapping loose in January.
Sub-zero cycling is the other factor. Consumer-grade strings from a big-box store go brittle after a few nights below zero and start dropping sections. We use commercial-grade materials cut and assembled to the house, which takes longer to fabricate on-site but holds through a Summit County winter. Fabrication happens at the property. It is part of the install day, and it is part of why install days are not interchangeable.
What to do if it is already November
Call anyway. A December install is still a display that runs through the holidays and into the new year, and a lot of Summit County's best lighting weeks are in late December and January when the snow is deep and the nights are long. But be ready to be flexible on a few things:
- Take the first available date, even if it is a Tuesday morning. Holding out for a weekend costs a week or more.
- Consider a ground-first install if roof access is uncertain, with the roofline added on the next clear window.
- Have your details ready — address, roof material, roughly how many linear feet of roofline, whether there is an HOA with color or timing rules, and whether anyone needs to be on-site for access.
- Ask about next season now. Booking for next year in January costs nothing and puts you in the first wave.
We are based in Frisco, which means we are not driving up from the Front Range when your display goes dark the week of Christmas. It also means our schedule is built around the same storms and the same short days you are watching out your own window.
Send us your address and roughly how many feet of roofline you want lit, and we will tell you honestly what week we can be there.