DIY Marquee Numbers

These DIY marquee numbers are the perfect decoration for a graduation, birthday party or New Year’s Eve! They are easy and inexpensive to create, while making a big statement in your decor!

I recently shared our son’s graduation decorations and these DIY marquee numbers were a focal piece of the decor hanging above the mantel. I am back today to show you how to make these large light up numbers. 🙂

To give you a perspective on the size of these large marquee numbers, each one is 16 inches tall and about 9-10 inches wide. So, they are not the giant marquee numbers that are big enough to stand alone on the ground, but they are big enough to make a great statement decor piece!

When I was looking for marquee numbers to buy for a reasonable price, I could only find smaller ones that were about 6-8 inches tall. I wanted something bigger to go on the mantel so I decided to make some myself.

Make inexpensive DIY marquee lights

I found a couple tutorials that I took some ideas from and was able to make all four DIY marquee numbers for about $40. So I would say that is a pretty good deal! Actually, you can make them for even less than that if you wait for the numbers to be half off at Hobby Lobby. I also found some inexpensive globe lights on Amazon that worked great. They had 40 lights per string so I ordered two strings figuring that one string could work across two numbers. This worked out perfectly!

We mounted the marquee lights by screwing them onto a pallet board on the mantel. We used dowel spacers so that they would stick out a bit to give more of a 3D look. The light strings are all enclosed in the marquee numbers and there is only one wire going between two of the numbers. You can’t see it as it is camouflaged by the streamers on the pallet board. 😉 We screwed the battery packs to each side of the pallet board. This made it super easy to turn them on/off.

I have to say I am really pleased with how they turned out. I think they look fantastic for some DIY light up numbers. And since we have one more to graduate, we can keep them around to use again and just change out the last number.

Another bonus… this tutorial would also work for making DIY marquee letters too! They would look so cool for a kid’s room, don’t you think? You could paint them to match with the the colors in their room. Or you could make some for a wedding with the newlyweds’ last name! I got all kinds of ideas flowing now. 🙂

Supplies to make DIY marquee numbers

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

How to make DIY marquee numbers

The first step in making these large light up numbers is to cut off the face of each Paper Mache number. You want to leave a clean edge as much as possible. So I used a pen knife to cut straight down along the inside edge of each number. Cutting with the pen knife took a little bit and my hand did get tired, so take a break if you need it. But this method gave me pretty clean lines.

After you get the face of the number off, you can take out and discard the innards of the number as you won’t need those.

Plan out your marquee light placement

Next, I had to figure out where and how far apart my lights were going to be placed. I wanted them in the direct center of the numbers. So using a ruler, I drew a line on the center of the back of each number face. The number faces were about 2.5 inches wide so I made my lines at 1.25 inches.

To go around the curves, I made some hash marks along the curves and hand drew them together to make a completed line.

Along the center line, I marked out some dots for the lights. I played with some different spacing but it turned out that about 2 inches apart worked the best.

I wanted a light bulb to be at the intersection of the two lines on the number 2, but it got a little too close to the edge so I cheated it in a bit. Then I used this distance from the edge to determine the distance on the ends of the number as well.

Mr. Wonderful came up with a great idea to test the light placement. Use batteries to see what the light placement would look like! This way we knew everything looked even and symmetrical before making our holes for the lights.

Drill holes for lights

I had Mr. Wonderful drill the holes for me using our drill press. You could also use a regular drill if you don’t have a drill press but this made the job a lot easier. He used a 1/4″ drill bit since that was the size of the back of the light bulb globes.

Paint the marquee numbers

We used some Rust-Oleum gold spray paint for the marquee numbers. We painted the whole inside and outside of the numbers (excluding the backs) and the front of the number faces with two coats.

To elevate them off the cardboard, we just used some scrap pieces of wood.

Add the globe lights

The worst part of the whole project was getting the globes off of the light strings. LOL! Some of them came off very easily, but some of them were super stubborn and hard to get off! But we finally got them all off and then poked the globes into the holes on the number face.

While doing this, it confirmed that the globes were not all created equal because some of them fit easily into the pre-drilled holes, and some were a littler tougher to get in. They did all fit but some had to be pushed in a little harder. 😉

String the marquee lights

There was a little planning that had to happen before just stringing the lights in the numbers. The way we did it, the whole light string is inside the finished marquee numbers so you can’t see it at all.

We made some enter/exit points on the numbers based on where the light string would come in and go out to use it across the two numbers. Using the pen knife, I made an X and it was easy enough to fit the light string through.

Knowing our battery packs were going to be attached to the sides of the pallet board these were being mounted on, I started coming in from the back of the bottom of the number 2 base. There was enough excess string to the battery pack to reach the side of the pallet board. I strung the lights into the globes on the back of the number 2 face. There were some extra unused lights to make it over to the next exit point on the side of the number 2. We covered these light bulbs with black electrical tape just to make sure they would not show. Lastly, the lights came back up into the number 0 base and were strung on the number 0 face.

We strung the next 2 and 3 numbers in similar fashion. You can see the enter/exit points on these numbers. I started coming in on the bottom of the number 3 base and strung the number 3 face. Again there were some extra lights on the bottom which we covered with black tape. Then the lights went out the top of the 3, and back into the number 2 base. There were some short wires in between each number with one light showing. We also covered that with black tape. You could eliminate the showing light if you want the numbers closer, but with the spacing of our numbers, we had to leave one light out. However the light was totally hidden on the mantel with the streamer backdrop.

Hanging the DIY marquee numbers

To mount the large light up numbers, we just screwed the number bases to the pallet board. It took two people to hang the numbers, one to hold the number face while the other screwed on the base. You can see the pre-drilled holes for the screws on the number 0 base. We also used some small pieces of dowels as spacers so the numbers stuck out from the pallet board and did not interrupt the flow of the streamers on the backdrop. Mr. Wonderful drilled out the center of the dowel spacer for the screw to pass through.

After the number base was screwed to the pallet board, we pushed the number face into the base. For the most part, they fit well. The number 0 was the only one we had a little issue with. It got a little wavy on us, as you can see below. I am not sure if it was how I cut the face or what, maybe it was not totally straight somewhere or something. Oh well, it still looks good overall. 🙂

We turned on the lights and enjoyed the view! These lights also have a blinking function if you prefer that.

What do you think of the DIY marquee lights? Do you have something you could use these for? They were a fairly easy project and definitely worth it in my opinion! The great thing is that they are super versatile. I think you could customize them to fit any event using either numbers or letters. Let me know if you have any questions! Chat soon friends!