A Colorado company built around the power of light to transform place.
Owner-operated holiday placemaking for cities, towns, resorts, shopping centers, and public spaces.
Elevation Holiday Lighting designs and builds large-scale seasonal environments that help people gather, move, celebrate, photograph, and remember a place differently.
Our story
Light changes what a place makes possible.
Mike and Beth first truly understood the power of light while running a solar energy company serving off-grid homes and villages in Tanzania. Light was not just technical. It changed what people could do, how they gathered, and how a place came alive after dark.
They returned to the United States with a vision to transform cities and towns through light. That vision became Elevation Holiday Lighting.
Today, Elevation brings that same belief to civic spaces, destination retail environments, resorts, parks, attractions, and large-scale public installations. The work is seasonal, but the goal is lasting: create places people want to enter, share, and remember.
What we believe
Holiday lighting is not just decoration. At scale, it becomes placemaking.
The best seasonal environments do more than look festive. They shape how people move through a place, where they pause, what they photograph, how long they stay, and what they associate with the season.
Light can gather people.
A strong seasonal display gives residents, visitors, shoppers, and families a reason to come together.
Light can guide movement.
Lighting can activate trails, plazas, corridors, storefronts, entries, and underused public spaces.
Light can create memory.
People remember the place where they took the photo, met friends, watched their kids, or marked a milestone.
Light can support business.
For towns and retail destinations, seasonal placemaking can support foot traffic, dwell time, events, and return visits.
Owner-operated
Senior attention from the first idea through takedown.
Elevation is large enough to execute complex public and commercial installations, and personal enough to care deeply about the details. Clients work with an owner-operated team that thinks about the design, the install, the service response, and the long-term relationship.
Mike Szymanski
Owner, design, client strategyMike brings a design-driven, entrepreneurial lens to the work. He is focused on how lighting can transform a whole place, not just decorate a single feature.
When he is not on a boom lift or dreaming up designs for the next season, he is active in the community teaching and mentoring entrepreneurs at CU Boulder, throughout Colorado, and around the world.
Beth Szymanski
Owner, operations, executionBeth brings an entrepreneurial spirit and operations focus to the business, with experience building systems, teams, and programs that require follow-through.
Her background includes starting a plastic recycling facility in Tanzania and helping hundreds of women start in-home child care programs. At Elevation, that operational discipline helps turn creative ideas into reliable seasonal environments.
The Elevation difference
Creative ambition with operational accountability.
Large-scale holiday lighting only works when the design is strong and the execution is serious. Elevation brings both: the creative eye to create a memorable seasonal destination and the service discipline to keep the display looking strong all season.
When we work on a public or commercial property, we understand that we are temporarily becoming part of that community. We take that responsibility seriously.
What clients can expect
A partner for the full season, not just installation week.
The experience guests see in December depends on decisions made months earlier and service delivered all season long.
Design
We create elegant, place-based displays that fit the property, the audience, the budget, and the desired public experience.
Planning
We think through electrical needs, access, installation timing, stakeholder coordination, events, weather, and maintenance.
Service
Weekly preventative visits, rapid response, and no service-charge mentality help keep public-facing displays strong.
Stewardship
We remove, store, document, and prepare the program for renewal, expansion, and improvement in future seasons.
Where we work
Built for places where the season matters.
Elevation is focused on large-scale public, civic, retail, resort, and destination environments where lighting can shape the experience of the whole place.
Cities and Towns
Downtown districts, public plazas, parks, trails, main streets, civic buildings, and community gathering spaces.
Shopping Centers
Main trees, walkthrough features, Santa sets, large decor, promenades, photo moments, and retail destinations.
Resorts and Attractions
Guest arrivals, ticketed experiences, programmed light shows, immersive trails, parks, and hospitality environments.
Trusted among the best
A relationship-driven team for high-visibility seasonal environments.
Elevation works with towns, retail destinations, resorts, attractions, national property managers, and commercial clients where the holiday season needs to look strong, work reliably, and feel memorable.
Start planning early
Have a place that should become a seasonal destination?
We work with cities, towns, shopping centers, resorts, parks, attractions, and property teams to design, build, maintain, remove, store, and evolve large-scale holiday experiences.
