Top 5 Reasons to Switch to Smart Holiday Lighting

Plug-in holiday lights have had a good run. Most of us grew up with them: a box in the garage, a tangle of cords, an afternoon on the ladder and a few bulbs that never quite work. Smart holiday lighting does the same job in a very different way, and for a lot of households it’s an easy switch to make.

Here are five reasons to make it, based on the Gemstone Lights systems we install around Campbell River.

1. Nobody has to climb a ladder

This is the big one. Gemstone’s lights go into a track under the soffit once and stay there, so there’s nothing to hang in November and nothing to take down in January. Gemstone itself warns that climbing on ladders or getting onto the roof can be hazardous, and that risk simply goes away.

It also changes what a holiday looks like on a wet coast evening. Instead of choosing between a soggy afternoon on the roof and a dark house, you pick a pattern on your phone.

2. Every light can do something different

A string of plug-in bulbs usually does one thing. Gemstone compared its lights with regular holiday lights, and the differences are mostly about control:

• Every Gemstone light can be set on its own. Regular strings mostly can’t.
• Each Gemstone light has red, green and blue diodes plus a warm white one. Regular bulbs are usually one colour, or red, green and blue only.
• The track comes in more than 150 colours to match your trim, where regular clips and channels come in a handful.

That’s why a Gemstone roofline can do a red-and-green pattern one night and a slow warm white the next.

3. Thousands of patterns, and a calendar that changes them for you

The Gemstone Lights app has more than 14,000 ready-made patterns, from classic red and green to Halloween orange and Valentine’s pink. You can also build your own in under a minute.

If you’d rather not think about it at all, Autopilot does it for you. Subscribe to the holiday calendars you want, free, and the lights switch to the right look on the right day. It covers the big holidays, from Christmas and Halloween to Canada Day, plus your team’s game days.

4. They’re useful the rest of the year

Old holiday lights spend eleven months in a box. Smart lights don’t. The same permanent outdoor lights that do Christmas in December give the house a soft warm white on ordinary evenings, on a timer that follows the sunset. They can light the path to the door when you get home in the dark, and switch to your team’s colours on game night.

5. They use very little power

Each Gemstone light draws at most 1 watt on full bright white, and colours draw less. Gemstone’s own example is an average home with 117 feet of roofline and 150 lights, which costs about $4.34 a month to run for 6 hours a night. Your own number depends on your power rate and how long you leave them on.

Is it worth it?

That depends on how much you decorate and how much you like the idea of never doing it again. If you put lights up every year, or you’d like to but never get around to it, smart holiday lighting is worth a look. The cost page explains what goes into the price, and we’re happy to measure your house for a free quote.