On a two story house, the hard part of Christmas lights is the height, not the lights. The edges worth lighting are the highest ones on the house, and a permanent roofline system moves that climb to one install day, so December is something you do from the driveway.
Why is a two story house the hard one to light?
On a one story ranch, the eave is within reach of a short ladder. On two stories, the lines that show from the street are the upper eave, the gable peaks and any dormers, which makes them the hardest places on the house to reach.
Three things make that harder than it sounds.
- The ground is rarely level. A ladder that has to reach a second-story gable usually stands on a slope, a deck or a flower bed, and it gets moved again and again along the run.
- The roofs meet at odd angles. A porch roof, a garage roof and the main roof join in valleys, and each join is another reposition and another strand to clip.
- One dark section means another trip. If a stretch goes out in the second week of December, someone climbs back up to find it.
So the choice every fall is the same: climb it yourself, pay someone in October to do it, or light only the lower roof and leave the top of the house dark. A house lit only at the porch looks half finished from the street, because the tall part is the part people see.
What does a permanent system change about the climb?
It happens once, and it is done by installers rather than by you. Our installers put a slim aluminum channel under the roof edge, color matched to your trim, with the lights sitting down inside it. The controller goes indoors. Once it is in, nobody goes back up there in November, and nobody goes up in January to take anything down.
Every foot of an upper-level run sits higher off the ground, so a two story roofline is slower work than a one story one. A typical house takes 8 to 10 hours, and a taller one gets its own figure at the free estimate, not a guess. The whole system is laid out on the system page.
Licensed, insured and certified installers do the work, so the person on the ladder is the person set up to be there. That is the whole difference: the climb still happens, once, and you are not the one making it.
How hard is it to put up permanent Christmas lights?
For you, it is not hard, because you are not the one putting them up. You choose the colors and the look on your phone, and the install is a day of the installers' time. See how the channel goes on for the steps in order.
If you are wondering about doing it yourself, the honest answer is that the channel is cut and mitered to fit your particular roofline and then fixed at the roof edge. On a two story house that is the same high edge that makes hanging strands such a chore, so it is work for people with the right equipment. At 6 to 12 hours a day, the system works out to about 10 to 20 years, and none of them needs a ladder.
What does red and green look like on two levels?
A two story roofline gives you two levels of line, and you can use both. These are Christmas looks in red and green, built from the effects in the app.
- Alternate along the upper eave. Red and green trade off bulb by bulb along the longest, highest line, which is the one the street sees first.
- Chase up the gables. A bright crest runs the edge of each gable, climbing one side and coming down the other, so the steep lines get all the motion.
- Solid on the lower roof. Hold the porch or garage roof in one steady color, so the upper level does the moving and the lower level frames it.
The upper roofline and the lower roofline can be separate zones, so each plays its own scene at the same time. One controller handles up to 8 zones. For more looks by house style, see Christmas light ideas for your roofline, and try the effects on a 3D model house on the presets page.
Can I run it all from the ground?
Yes. The app is on your phone, so you can stand in the driveway, tap a look and watch the gable change. You can also set a schedule once, with a sunset timer, and the roofline turns itself on each evening. Voice control and the rest are covered on the app control page.
Nothing about it needs a trip up to the roof. When the season ends, the same lights run another setting; the all-year side of that is on can Christmas lights stay up all year.
How is a two story house priced?
The price comes from the roofline itself: how much upper edge there is, how many gables and dormers, and how much of the lower roof you want lit. A photo cannot settle that, which is why the walkthrough is free. Bigger houses with several wings and extra controllers are covered on the large homes page, and the general picture of a Christmas install is on permanent Christmas lights in Nashville. How pricing works is set out on the pricing page.
Send the quote form and an installer will call you; your free estimate follows.