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Permanent Christmas Lights & Year-Round Lighting
Permanent lighting is an LED system fitted once along your roofline and trim, then left there. It disappears into the architecture by day and turns on from your phone at night — for Christmas, for the Fourth of July, for a birthday, or just for warm accent light on an ordinary evening.
What permanent lighting actually is
A permanent lighting system is a run of individually addressable LED diodes seated inside a low-profile channel that is fastened under the roofline, along the fascia, or into the trim detail of the house. The channel is colour-matched to the surface it sits on, so from the street during the day most people never notice it is there.
Each diode can be addressed on its own. That is what separates a permanent system from a string of bulbs: instead of one fixed colour per run, you get patterns, gradients, chases, warm white, or a single solid colour across the whole roofline, all from the same hardware.
Control is handled from an app on your phone or tablet over WiFi or Bluetooth. Brightness, colour, pattern and schedule are all adjustable without anyone going up a ladder.
One install instead of a ladder every December
The practical argument for permanent lighting in the Inland Northwest is the weather. Seasonal installation happens in the narrow window between the end of October and the first hard freeze, and takedown happens in January on a roof that has had six weeks of snow and ice on it. That is the dangerous half of the job, and it repeats annually.
A permanent system is installed once, in good conditions, by someone working off a planned layout rather than racing a storm front. After that the roofline is finished. Turning the display on is a tap, and turning it off in January is the same tap.
It also means the lights are available the rest of the year. Most clients find they use the system far more often than they expected once the only cost of switching it on is deciding to.
Every holiday, not just Christmas
Because colour is set in software rather than fixed in the bulb, one install covers the whole calendar. Red and green through December, orange for Halloween, red white and blue for Memorial Day and the Fourth, green for St Patrick’s, pink and red for Valentine’s, school colours on a game night, or a single colour for a charity awareness month.
Outside the holidays, most systems spend the majority of their hours on a warm white or soft amber setting that reads as architectural accent lighting rather than as decoration. It highlights the lines of the roof and adds genuine light to a driveway or entry.
What it costs
Permanent lighting is a capital purchase rather than a seasonal service, and it is priced that way. For materials and labour, expect in the region of $2,800 to $3,800 for the first 100 feet of roofline. A larger home running several hundred feet lands somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000.
Against that, a seasonal install and takedown is an annual cost that never stops. The crossover point depends on how much roofline you light and how long you intend to stay in the house, which is the honest thing to work out before you commit. We will give you both figures for your own property and let you compare them.
Design and quoting are free. Someone looks at the roofline, measures the runs, and gives you a written figure with no obligation attached.
Why this is not a DIY job
The parts are available to buy, and the failure modes are predictable. Channel that is fastened through the wrong part of the fascia lets water behind the trim. Runs that are not planned around the power budget dim at the far end. Transformers mounted somewhere they can take weather fail in the second winter. Splices made without a proper weatherproof joint corrode and drop a whole section.
The other half of it is that this is permanent. A seasonal mistake comes down in January. A permanent one is fastened to your house for as long as the house stands, in full view of the street.
Common questions
Barely. The channel is low-profile and colour-matched to the fascia or trim it mounts to, so it reads as a shadow line rather than as a fixture. Most visitors do not notice it until it is pointed out to them.
Not when it is fastened correctly. The channel is attached to structural trim with the right fastener for the substrate, and penetrations are sealed. Done wrong it absolutely can let water in, which is the main reason to have it installed by someone who does it regularly.
Yes. The diodes are sealed and run on low voltage, and the channel is designed to shed water. Inland Northwest winters are exactly the conditions these systems are built for.
Very little. These are LEDs on a low-voltage supply, and the typical roofline draws less than a few incandescent bulbs would. Running a warm white setting most evenings costs a trivial amount.
Of course. Plenty of clients run the permanent system on the roofline and still do wreaths, trees and ground displays seasonally. The permanent system covers the part of the job that involves a ladder and a roof.
Call us. Individual sections are serviceable, and because the layout is documented from the install we know where the runs and the power injection points are without having to trace the whole roofline.
Where we install permanent lighting
Permanent lighting is installed across the Spokane area and North Idaho. Pick your town for local detail on rooflines, access and cost.
- Spokane, WA
- Spokane Valley, WA
- Liberty Lake, WA
- Greenacres, WA
- Veradale, WA
- Otis Orchards, WA
- South Hill, Spokane WA
- Mead, WA
- Airway Heights, WA
- Cheney, WA
- Deer Park, WA
- Newman Lake, WA
- Coeur d’Alene, ID
- Post Falls, ID
- Hayden, ID
- Rathdrum, ID
- Dalton Gardens, ID
- Sandpoint, ID
- Priest River, ID
- Spirit Lake, ID
- Medical Lake, WA
Design and quoting are free, with no obligation. We will give you the permanent figure and the seasonal figure side by side so you can compare them honestly.