Hanging Christmas lights on brick and stucco

Short answer: on brick, use masonry hooks that grip the mortar joint rather than anything that tries to stick to the brick face. On stucco, there is no easy removable option — the honest answer is usually to route lights along trim, a gutter or a fascia board instead of across the stucco itself.

Why adhesive fails here

Adhesive needs a smooth, clean, non-porous surface to bond to. Brick is porous and texturally rough at exactly the scale adhesive needs to be smooth. Stucco is worse — it is deliberately textured, and there is no flat area for a strip to contact.

Add winter temperatures, which most adhesives specify against, and you have a product being used well outside its conditions. It is the single most common cause of a run of lights falling off a wall in the first cold snap. More on this in clips vs adhesive hooks.

Brick: use the mortar joint

Masonry hooks — sometimes sold as brick clips or brick hangers — are sprung metal hooks sized to grip the recessed mortar joint between courses. They wedge in with hand pressure, hold a surprising amount, and come out in January leaving nothing.

• Match the hook to the joint width. Standard mortar joints are around 3/8 inch and most hooks are sized for that, but older buildings vary considerably.
• They need a recessed joint. If the mortar is flush with the brick face, or the wall has been repointed proud, the hook has nothing to grip.
• Place in the horizontal joint, not the vertical. Horizontal joints are continuous and give you free choice of position along the run.
• Do not hammer them. They wedge with hand pressure. Forcing one can chip the mortar or the brick edge.

Stucco: the honest answer is harder

Stucco has no joints to grip, no seam to slot into, and a surface too rough for adhesive. It is genuinely the hardest common exterior surface for temporary attachment, and pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon.

What actually works:

1. Do not attach to the stucco at all. Route along the fascia, the gutter, a trim board, a window frame or the roof edge, all of which take standard hardware.
2. Use the roof edge above it. Most stucco walls are below a roofline with either a gutter or a shingle course — use clips or shingle tabs there.
3. Light the architecture in front of the wall — columns, railings, planters, shrubs — rather than the wall itself.
4. If something must attach to stucco, a purpose-made stucco anchor is the only reliable route, and it leaves a hole. That is a permanent-installation decision, not a seasonal one.

A note on window and door outlines

Outlining windows and doors is a strong look on a brick or stucco house, precisely because it works with the architecture rather than against a blank wall. And it is easier to mount: window and door surrounds are almost always wood or composite trim, which takes small clips or hooks without touching the masonry at all.

C7 rather than C9 suits window outlines — the smaller bulb is better proportioned at close range. See C9 vs C7.