Permanent lighting: what it is, and what goes on your house

What is permanent lighting?

Permanent lighting is a fixture on the house rather than a decoration on it. A run of RGBW LED pucks sits inside a channel painted to a paint ID measured off your own trim, the channel mounts up under the eave, and the wiring is hidden on install day. It goes up once and stays there, and that is the whole of the difference.

Everything else follows from it staying there. No ladder in November and none in January, no box in the garage, and no take-down deadline to meet, because nothing comes down. The lights are run from your phone instead: you pick a color and a movement, save it as a scene, and put the scene on a schedule. What is on the front of the house in daylight is a single line the color of the board it is fixed to.

The rest of the questions people ask before they buy

What does it look like in the daytime?

It reads as trim, because it is trim colored and it sits where trim sits. The channel goes up under the eave rather than out on the open roof, and its color is a Sherwin-Williams paint ID measured off your own fascia rather than a catalog white, so at noon what a passer-by sees is a line the same color as the board it is fixed to.

Where it sits does more than hide it. Tucked up behind the fascia, the lenses are not in the line of fire the way a roof mounted fixture's are, which is why hail has never damaged an installed run of ours across several Front Range seasons. The corner connectors are printed in the same color as the channel, so a run turns a corner as one continuous line rather than a row of white joints.

What Front Range weather does to a run

Can I use it outside the holidays?

Yes, and that is most of what it does. The W in RGBW is a true warm white, so the ordinary setting is warm white down lighting on the front of the house, and the color is there for the nights you want it. Holidays are a handful of scenes on a system that is lit the rest of the time.

A look is saved as a scene, and a scene goes on a schedule, so the house can come on at sunset, dim at a set hour and go off again with nobody touching it. Team colors on game day, warm white through the week, and whatever December needs, all out of the same run and the same controller. The alternative is a crew on a ladder twice a season for a display that is only up for part of the winter.

How is it different from the lights I can buy online?

A kit is parts in a box, and this is a system measured, painted and fitted to one house with the labor inside the warranty. Three of the differences never appear on a parts list: the channel is painted to a paint ID read off your own trim, the controller cuts the power to the LEDs when the lights are off instead of only turning them off in software, and the five year cover runs to the work as well as the hardware.

Ask whoever is selling you a system the question we would want asked of ours: when the lights are off, is the power to the LEDs actually cut? Ours disconnects the LED load through a solid state relay and sits at 0.003 watts standby, less than an LED night light. A system that is off in software only stays energized at full standby while the house looks dark, and it spends its rated LED hours doing it. The color match is the other thing a box cannot ship, because the paint ID is measured, the channel is sprayed in our own five station booth before it leaves, and the connectors are printed to match.

Whether it works out cheaper to do it yourself LED software setup, in the knowledge base

Who owns the system, and what happens if I sell the house?

You own it outright, and it stays on the house. There is no lease and no monthly fee to pass on, and no cloud account holding your scenes for somebody to transfer, because the scenes and the schedule are held on the Sentinel controller mounted at the property. When the house changes hands the lighting goes with it.

That is a consequence of how the controller is built rather than a policy we could change later. Nothing about the system depends on an account staying open, so there is no app fee, nothing to log out of, and nothing to hand over at closing beyond the house itself. Financing through Wisetack, with 0% options, is a loan against a purchase rather than a rental, so the system is yours from the day it goes up.