Ordinary retail Christmas strings are not meant to stay up past the season. A permanent channel system is installed to stay up all year, and it is the answer to "christmas lights you never take down."
How is a permanent system different from Christmas light strings?
A string is a wire with bulbs that gets clipped or taped to the house and comes down again. A permanent system is a different piece of equipment altogether, and it is made of three parts. Stick-on kits sold for the same job are compared with a professional install in a DIY kit vs. a professional install.
- The channel. A slim aluminum track, color matched to your trim and fixed under the roof edge. It is the only piece attached to the house, and no fastener goes through your gutter or your shingles.
- The lights. Each one sits down inside the channel, so there is no bulb to swap and no cord to see.
- The controller. One unit, mounted indoors and included with every install, set up for you and run from your phone.
Our installers put the channel in with corners cut and mitered to fit rather than bent, and the spacing is even down the whole run. The full breakdown is on the system page. Most installs take 8 to 10 hours.
What does the roofline do the other 11 months?
This is where the question changes. Once the lights are permanent, December is only one setting among many, and you switch between them from the app.
- Christmas. Red and green along the eaves and gables for the holiday season, then back to normal on January 1 without anyone touching a ladder.
- Other holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July and the rest of the calendar each get their own palette.
- Game day. Pick your team's two colors and run them on Saturday.
- Warm white. The everyday look: a soft glow on an ordinary evening, set on a sunset schedule so the house runs itself, and a 150 ft roofline on a 6 hour timer works out to 296 kWh over a full year.
Each of these is a saved preset, which means a look rather than a separate product. You can try them on a 3D model of a house on the presets page, and see how the whole idea compares to hanging lights every fall on permanent versus seasonal lights.
What does it look like in daylight?
It looks like trim. As the owner puts it: "By day the install is basically invisible. No ugly holiday lights hanging all year."
That is the point of the color matched channel. Dark bronze goes under a dark soffit and white goes under white trim, so with the lights off your eye reads one low line under the roof edge. Nothing shows on the front of the house or the roof, and there are no cords or boxes outside. Neighbors walking past in the afternoon see a normal house.
For the gutter question in full, read how it stays off the gutter, and for the order the work goes in, how permanent lights are installed.
How long does it last, and is it worth it?
At 6 to 12 hours a day, the system works out to about 10 to 20 years. That is the practical answer to "is it worth it": you pay for the installation once, and the same lights then cover Christmas, game days and every quiet evening, with no yearly hanging, untangling or storage.
Does it need much care, and what is covered?
Very little. A rinse during your regular gutter cleaning clears the Nashville pollen and summer dust. Nothing comes down in January and nothing needs untangling next November.
The lights work independently, so if one ever goes out, the rest of the run stays lit. A snapshot taken from the driveway at night tells the installers where to look.
Coverage comes in two parts: the manufacturer's 5-year product warranty and our installers' workmanship warranty. What to do if something fails is spelled out on the coverage and care page.
Can I see what it would look like on my house?
Yes. Licensed, insured and certified installers come out, look at the roofline and give you one price with the installation included. The channel is cut for your particular house, so the number depends on your home rather than a standard package.
For the holiday-specific version of all this, including how a Christmas install goes, see permanent Christmas lights in Nashville. To see how pricing works, start at pricing.
Send the quote form and an installer will call you; your free estimate follows.