Decking the Halls : Entrepreneurs: ‘Tis the season for O.C. designers specializing in indoor and outdoor holiday decorations.

Santa Claus has it easy compared to John Juniper.

Instead of eight tiny reindeer, the owner of Rudolph’s Lighting hires a professional mountain climber to scale the roofs of clients’ houses and arrange the hundreds of twinkling lights that make up the elaborate patterns of the season.

Juniper, who is based in Laguna Niguel, is one of a handful of entrepreneurs who spend six frenzied weeks of the year scrambling up wobbly ladders and trees, clinging onto eaves and awnings, to decorate homes and businesses throughout Southern California.

“There are houses where you have to hold people by the feet and dangle them over the edge,” said Juniper, who has a steady crew of 15 to help him hang the miniature lights that create delicate icicles and elegant snowfalls under the eaves of homes. “Sometimes you just think, ‘God, is it really worth the money?’ ”

The answer for the photographer and designer is always yes, for both artistic and financial reasons. Decorators’ rates for exterior designs run from about $200 for putting up a simple string of lights under the roof line to $3,000 for the more ambitious displays of stars, reindeer and dripping icicles.

Inside jobs, while less dangerous, are certainly no cheaper. One Santa Ana designer recently trimmed a Los Angeles living room with wreaths, holly, greens and a tree decked out with the hottest designer ornaments.

Her bill: $3,500.

And the list of customers just keeps on growing.

Whether it’s busy work schedules, keeping up with the exotic displays of neighbors or the pestering of their kids, more and more residents are hiring commercial outfits to put up outdoor displays and to decorate Christmas trees, walls and mantles inside.

“This year is 100% better than last year,” said Michael Smith, owner of Chris Lindsay Designs in Costa Mesa, who sometimes sends in eight designers for the day to decorate a home or business. “It has become a big portion of our profits over the years and now is probably 25% of our gross.”

Like other designers in the region who specialize in holidays, Smith maintains a 20,000-square-foot warehouse packed with lights and ornaments. His staff will deliver a fully decorated Christmas tree to your door for a mere $750 to $950.

The demand has also spawned a number of enterprises that exist only for the holidays.

Robert Graumann, owner of Fullerton’s Spirit of Christmas, said that he and some of his friends are able to pay a full year’s tuition and expenses at Fullerton College with earnings from catering to the seasonal indulgences of his customers.

The 27-year-old student came up with the idea for starting his own decorative lighting business while working for his brother-in-law’s paint company seven years ago. Perched atop a roof, he noticed another lighting company soliciting holiday customers.

“I said, ‘Boom! That’s it,’ ” recalled Graumann, whose trademark is turning 40-foot palm trees into red-and-white candy canes. “I wanted my own business, and I already had my ladder skills.”

His annual six-week enterprise has been so successful that Graumann has scrapped his plans to go to medical school and is majoring in business instead.

Not that this line of work is easy. The decorators have to display artistic flair, but the work can also be tedious and dangerous.

Juniper, the Rudolph’s Lighting owner, recalled how one of his workers reached the top of a two-story tiled roof with his cords of lights and panicked. “He got up there and just froze,” Juniper said, chuckling. “We had to go up and guide him down. He was an artist.”

The worker stayed on but confined himself to creating lacy icicles and wreaths on ground floors and shorter trees.

Graumann has also had his share of macho novices who start to shake about halfway up the ladder.

Then there was the worker who was taking the entire day to string lights on one small bush. After quizzing the worker about why he was taking so long, Graumann learned the guy had a deathly fear of spiders.

The frightening roof peaks of many Laguna Hills homes can intimidate even the most experienced decorator. That’s when Juniper turns to David Yanes, a professional mountain climber who scales the structure with his picks and rappels down the side, lights streaming from his shoulders.

“We’ve probably got the world’s best Christmas lighter,” Juniper said of Yanes. “He has construction background, he’s a rock climber, and he’s an artist.”

Artistic flair seems to assume a higher priority for interior jobs. Christmas tree designs have become more complex over the years, said Costa Mesa interior designer Sotera Townsend, who has been decorating trees and homes for about 10 years.

Typically, the designers meet with clients in their homes to absorb the general look and feel of the living room and then discuss possible decorative themes, ranging from seashell motifs to traditional bowed ferns.

The decorators then return with trees, porcelain cherubs, blown-glass bulbs and other ornaments to turn the home into a fantasy land. The ornaments alone can run as much as $1,000. The companies also charge $35 to $65 an hour to put up the decorations and similar rates to take them down.

Obtaining the raw materials is often the most tedious chore for all.

Graumann said he spends as much time scouring discount stores for lights as he does putting them up.

Smith, the owner of Chris Lindsay Designs, personally goes to Oregon and picks out at least 50 trees for his business and residential customers. In the summer, he attends the gift shows in New York to find unique ornaments.

Some clients also insist on having some of their own ornaments put up, said Diane Smith, who owns Sisters Flowers and Gifts in Santa Ana with partner Kim Schneider. “If the ornaments are too trashed, we’ll bring them back to the office and fix them up,” she said.

Even though bills for holiday decorating can run into the thousands of dollars, the phenomenon is no longer restricted to the wealthy, decorators say.

“More middle-class people are doing it now,” said Diane Smith, who did the trimmings for two secretaries last year.

“I think it makes them feel good that they have a professional in their home,” she said. “It makes them feel important.”