Permanent Lights vs Yearly Christmas Light Installation

If you hire someone to put up your Christmas lights, you already know the routine. Somebody comes in the fall, the house looks great for a few weeks, and then the lights come down in January. Next year, you book it again.

Permanent lights take a different approach: they go up once and stay. Here’s how the two compare, so you can decide which makes more sense for your house.

What a seasonal installation usually includes

Seasonal installers vary, so here is one example. A Vancouver company’s published package covers a design consultation, installing the lights in October or early November, a mid-season repair visit if a strand fails, a takedown in January, and storing the lights until next year. In the first year you pay for the lights as well as the labour. After that, the price drops because the lights are already bought, but you still pay for the install, takedown and storage every season.

That’s a good service if you only want lights for the holidays and don’t want to own anything. The thing to notice is that it’s a cost every year, for about two months of light.

What permanent lights involve

Permanent Christmas lights are installed once. With Gemstone Lights, the system we install, the lights sit in a slim aluminium track under the soffit, matched to your trim from more than 150 colours so it’s hard to spot during the day. There’s nothing to take down and nothing to store.

When December comes, you pick a Christmas pattern in the app, from more than 14,000 ready-made ones, or let Gemstone’s free Christmas Autopilot calendar change them for you. That was the whole idea behind Gemstone in the first place: its founder, Tate Leavitt, started the company in 2016 after getting sick of hanging his own Christmas lights.

Comparing the costs

The two are priced in different ways, which makes a direct comparison tricky:

• Seasonal installation is a recurring cost. You pay each year, and some installers price by the linear foot of roofline.
• Permanent lights are a one-time cost, plus a small amount of power. Gemstone prices its track lighting on the number of linear feet lit and the local rate for installation. Running costs are low: Gemstone’s example is about $4.34 a month for an average home lit 6 hours a night.

The honest way to compare is to add up what you’d pay for seasonal installation over the years you plan to stay in the house, and set that against a permanent quote. Our cost page explains what goes into a Gemstone price, and we’ll give you an exact figure for free.

Convenience

With a seasonal service, you’re on someone else’s calendar. The lights go up when the crew can come, and they come down in January whether you’re ready or not.

With permanent lights, Christmas starts the day you choose. You can turn the lights on for the first snowfall, a holiday party or the Big Truck Parade, and leave them up until the last guest has gone home. There’s no ladder and no booking.

The other ten months

This is the biggest difference. Seasonally installed lights spend most of the year in a warehouse. Permanent lights keep working: a warm white on ordinary evenings, orange and purple for Halloween, red and white for Canada Day, team colours on game nights. You get a lit house all year for the same install.

Which should you choose?

A seasonal installation can make sense if you’re renting, planning to move soon, or only want lights for a few weeks a year.

Permanent lights make more sense if you plan to stay in the house, you’d use the lights beyond Christmas, or you’re tired of booking the same job every fall. If that sounds like you, ask us for a free quote and compare it with what you pay each season.