Permanent "Holiday" Lights discussion

T

The Automation Guy

Known around here
Feb 7, 2019
1,597
3,151
USA
I know there are a few people on here that have permanent holiday lights. I just bought some after Christmas myself. I have a feeling that they are going to get more and more popular, so I thought I would start a discussion thread about them. Obviously there are better dedicated forums/resources available, but I think this thread has it's place here.

First, let me be honest and say that I really don't love the look of moving colored lights on people's houses. So why would I want to buy and install them on my house? Honestly my main purpose in getting the lights is more for the white lights. My house has siding on it which means if you add landscape lighting on the ground pointing up, the siding creates ugly shadows unless the lights are positioned far away from the house. I don't have the ability to do that without the lights being in the middle of my yard. Therefore the only way to be able to add a little accent lighting to my house is from the top pointing down. I'm hoping that this solution give me the look I am after. I'm sure I'll use the colored lights occasionally (for special occasions/holidays), but even then I think often times they will be static. It will be interesting to see if my opinion about moving or colored lights on a house will change once I can play with it on my house.

I bought the Asahom Pro S1080 lights. WLED integration was important to me and while you might be able to "hack" other systems to use WLED, the fact that these lights support it out of the box was a nice plus. For example, it's likely that I won't turn on every single LED in my white light scene which should minimize the "stacking triangle" look which I think it part of the "look" that I don't really like. With WLED, it is simply to program every individual LED to whatever color and brightness I want.

- So what are some things that you wish you knew before buying/installing these lights? (Hopefully I will have my own opinions to share after I install mine).

- Did you use some sort of track to install the lights and wiring in, or is it installed "raw"?

- What do you like/dislike about your system?

- How about posting some pictures of how you installed them as well as the "final look" that it gives your house!
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: Clark Griswald, jrbeddow, Tinman and 2 others
I want to do the same thing-- A house a few blocks away did that lighting under the soffit-- very cool Halloween lighting effect when they put it up. The adjusted the colors and animation for Thanksgiving and of course for Christmas. I am going to do the same thing sometime this spring.... :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: jrbeddow
The Automation Guy said:
I know there are a few people on here that have permanent holiday lights. I just bought some after Christmas myself. I have a feeling that they are going to get more and more popular, so I thought I would start a discussion thread about them. Obviously there are better dedicated forums/resources available, but I think this thread has it's place here.

First, let me be honest and say that I really don't love the look of moving colored lights on people's houses. So why would I want to buy and install them on my house? Honestly my main purpose in getting the lights is more for the white lights. My house has siding on it which means if you add landscape lighting on the ground pointing up, the siding creates ugly shadows unless the lights are positioned far away from the house. I don't have the ability to do that without the lights being in the middle of my yard. Therefore the only way to be able to add a little accent lighting to my house is from the top pointing down. I'm hoping that this solution give me the look I am after. I'm sure I'll use the colored lights occasionally (for special occasions/holidays), but even then I think often times they will be static. It will be interesting to see if my opinion about moving or colored lights on a house will change once I can play with it on my house.

I bought the Asahom Pro lights. WLED integration was important to me and while you might be able to "hack" other systems to use WLED, the fact that these lights support it out of the box was a nice plus. For example, it's likely that I won't turn on every single LED in my white light scene which should minimize the "stacking triangle" look which I think it part of the "look" that I don't really like. With WLED, it is simply to program every individual LED to whatever color and brightness I want.

- So what are some things that you wish you knew before buying/installing these lights? (Hopefully I will have my own opinions to share after I install mine).

- Did you use some sort of track to install the lights and wiring in, or is it installed "raw"?

- What do you like/dislike about your system?

- How about posting some pictures of how you installed them as well as the "final look" that it gives your house!
Click to expand...
All I can say for now is "ditto" to every point you made. I even bought the exact same lights as you did (Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal), but had to put off the installation until the weather improves a bit (and now that the hectic holiday season is over). I do have an open soffit situation to deal with (roof rafter tails exposed), so will likely be installing on 1" x2" wood "rails" AND the plastic track available from #1 Track for Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights. I wish that damn track didn't cost more than the lights, but oh well.

Like you, I have mixed feelings about the look, but I really wanted to move away from dangling icicle lights that made my cameras extra "challenging" during the holiday period, although in-camera IVS rules helped a great deal here.

I am really looking forward to following this thread, I will try to update when they go up on the house.
 
Definitely makes your camera situation more challenging, especially if you plan on having them on all the time. Even more so if they’re out in the yard pointing back at house. I’ve had to go back and reposition several clients cams where they did the soffit permanent lights afterwards.
If you only plan on using them occasionally and don’t mind doing the work yourself, if you’re in the states every Home Depot rental section has an EZ cable trencher. About $100 a day, splits ground, puts cable (of any form that comes on a spool) into trench, then closes trench in one motion. So you could either put lights or cams out of field of conflict. I use them a few times a year for large rural projects for an outer peremiter/early warning.
 
Several of my neighbors started getting them a year or two back. I haven't talked to them about it but I think they all were professionally installed by Trimlight (Permanent LED Holiday Lighting | Trimlight) as I've seen advertisement signs in yards and a branded trailer of theirs seems to live in town since a while back.

They're very expensive from what I can tell. Wouldn't surprise me if these installs were each over $5k, some maybe over $10k.

1.jpg2.jpg3.jpg

Anyway I think they look a lot nicer than relatively cheap kits I find online fom Govee. The ones I've seen are installed in rigid tracks with lights spaced relatively densely. They have none of the distinct triangular lighting pattern. It is a soft rounded glow against the house siding. All full RGB, often color themed and/or animated for whatever holiday is near.
 
I installed my own about 4 or 5 years ago and it turned out to be a bigger project than I thought. I started out with buying a DIY solution from PermaTrack which included 400' of track, in 5' sections (80 total), and 2400 RGB pixels. PermaTrack was a new company back then and they didn't offer many options so I ended up getting track that didn't match my house and pixels that were in spools of 400 lights. I painted the track to match my house and cut the pixels into lengths of 30 lights. I soldered Xconnect connectors on each end of the strings so that if there was an issue I could easily take down a section and repair it. I connected my lights to a Falcon F16 V3 controller and use XLights to create my custom sequences.

Painted Track.jpg Lights.jpg

Corner.jpg Installed Track.jpeg

Controller.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ri22o, jrbeddow and tigerwillow1
EDIT - I had typed up this response a while ago but didn't post it. In that time, Vettester posted his installation which uses the sting lights I refer to.

bp2008 - There is plenty of information about those systems online if you want to DIY that kind of project. Most people get strings of individually addressable light strings and mount them in special channels made for that application. Those strings generally have a LED every 4" or so.

I can't say if those "professionally installed" systems in your neighborhood used this type of string LED or not, but many installation companies are using them. Those companies tend to charge an arm and a leg for a turn key system, but in reality the hardware costs aren't really that much higher than buying a premade kit along with a track system to install them in. The main difference is that those systems do take a lot more effort to install and wire them all together however. For example, those systems tend to require a lot of power injection along the LEDs string sto ensure the LEDs keep a consistent brightness, so you generally have to run a power line down the channel along with the actual string lights and tie into the power every so often. It's the labor cost that makes some of these installations so expensive, but DIY labor is "free". ;)

For me, I'm going with "easy" to start out with. My plan is to throw a section of lights up temporarily to see if I am going to like how they look. If I don't, I'll return them and consider DIYing a string light system.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: jrbeddow and bp2008
Nice. I would consider doing it DIY for $5 to $10 per foot, but with as little experience as I have with those things I would probably mess it up.

The only holiday lighting I do is:
  • Low-effort Halloween lighting on my porch (only on Halloween and only until we run out of candy)
  • Christmas lights around porch railings, fence, and roof gutters. They go up approximately at the end of November, down in mid January.

For Christmas, I just use super cheap LED Christmas lights every year. Not a big deal, it takes maybe 45 minutes to put up or take down and they cost $25 to $30 for a 165 foot spool with 500 lights. $0.15 to $0.18 per foot. Plus a bit more for plastic clips to attach them to the gutters. They are not nearly as bright or fancy as the permanent mounted stuff, but they look like actual Christmas lights. The permanent track-mounted stuff just looks like money LMAO.

This year I swapped one of the 165 foot cheap LED runs with 5x 33ft VintaGlo Yule Multi strings. They cost me about 4x as much as the cheap non-vintage-looking variety. Also 5x the power despite similar apparent brightness, I guess due to the way they output a more broad spectrum through color filters to achieve their look. Unfortunately I think it looks pretty ... weird ... having the vintage warm incandescent look and the modern cold LED look both near each other. I'm not sure what I will do next year with all of this.

Also, damn, would you believe I only took one shitty picture of it this year?

2025-12-10 17.57.36 (Large).jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Clark Griswald, Vettester, jrbeddow and 2 others
As an Amazon Associate IPCamTalk earns from qualifying purchases.
I want permanent lights since it would make every season much easier... but I have a hipped roof and there is no good way to install them that wouldn't look horrible the other 65% of the year.

Neighbors have started installing the Govee lights, but I am not a fan of the scalloped look on the house.

1767923369543.png

1767923463878.png

However, next year I plan to also do projection mapping on the front of my house.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Automation Guy
Ri22o said:
However, next year I plan to also do projection mapping on the front of my house.
Click to expand...

Using the Clark Griswald Principle, going by scale where are you going to get a projector that size, and what about the cost to operate? Anything is better than these dang lights being hung/taken down.
 
Clark Griswald said:
Using the Clark Griswald Principle, going by scale where are you going to get a projector that size, and what about the cost to operate? Anything is better than these dang lights being hung/taken down.
Click to expand...
Cold fusion and I will need to buy the house across the street, tear it down, and replace it with a proportionally sized projector.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Clark Griswald
Clark Griswald said:
Using the Clark Griswald Principle, going by scale where are you going to get a projector that size, and what about the cost to operate? Anything is better than these dang lights being hung/taken down.
Click to expand...

Actually the projectors are not that big. I know a guy that bought one for like $2k and the box is like 2'x4'x2'
 
wittaj said:
Actually the projectors are not that big. I know a guy that bought one for like $2k and the box is like 2'x4'x2'
Click to expand...
The one I plan to use is around 20"x17". The enclosure will probably be 30"x30" because I can't find anything in a 28" that will work.

A lot of people use an Epson L210SF, which is around 12"x10".
 
  • Like
Reactions: Clark Griswald and looney2ns
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom