The downsides of permanent Christmas lights, and when to lease instead
We install permanent roofline lighting and we lease seasonal C9 displays. Here is where the permanent option falls short, and how we decide which one to put on your house.
The honest short answer
The downsides of permanent Christmas lights are real but narrow. The cost lands in one payment instead of spreading across years. The look is a clean line of small points of light, not a row of big glass-style bulbs. The channel has to be fastened to trim, and not every piece of trim should take that. And on some houses you can see the fixture from the driveway at noon.
We sell both options, a permanent system fitted once and a season lease of commercial C9 LEDs that we hang in November and remove in January. That puts us in an odd spot for a sales page: we make money either way, so we have no reason to push you toward the wrong one. When the lease is the better fit, we tell you, and the LightCast tool prices both from the same measurement so you can see the gap yourself.
Below are the cases where permanent lighting is the wrong buy, the worries that turn out not to matter, and the short set of questions we use to make the call.
If you are moving soon
A permanent roofline pays off over years of use. If there is a real chance you will list the house within the next twelve months, you would be paying for a fixture and enjoying one season of it. That is the clearest case for the lease, and it is the first question we ask.
A lease suits a seller for a plainer reason too. We own the lights, so there is nothing to pack, nothing to leave behind by accident, and the whole display comes off in January, so nothing is left on the house for the buyer to deal with. If you are listing this winter, our guide to Christmas lights when selling your house covers the listing side, and your agent is the right person to ask about photo timing.
If you want the classic December look
Some people love the look of big C9 bulbs on a roofline: fat, faceted, evenly spaced, the display they remember from their parents' house. A permanent system does not recreate that. It is a row of small diodes set in a slim aluminum channel, and even in warm white or red and green it reads as a crisp line of points rather than a string of bulbs.
A steep Tudor gable in Grosse Pointe or a porch-heavy two-story near downtown Rochester can wear either one well. If yours is the bulb, lease it. For a side-by-side of the two looks, see C9 bulbs vs permanent LED lights.
The other half of this preference is timing. If you want the house lit for December and dark the other eleven months, a permanent system can do that on a schedule, but you would be buying year-round capability to use for one month. A lease gives you exactly the month you want.
Trim that should not carry a mount
Every permanent channel we fit goes on the fascia board or beneath the lip of the drip edge, with hardware chosen for what that trim is made of. Nothing goes through a shingle. That rule protects the roof, but it means the trim itself has to be sound enough to hold a fastener for years. Some trim is not.
- Original wood on older homes. Century-old fascia can be solid, or it can be soft behind the paint. We inspect it on site before anything is ordered, and if the wood should be left alone we say so.
- Trim due for repair. Rot, peeling paint or loose aluminum wrap should be fixed before anything is fastened to it. If that work is a year away, the lease covers you in the meantime.
- Cornices without a plain fascia board. Some older houses have decorative or built-in trim at the roof edge with no simple, flat board to mount to. Forcing a channel onto it is a poor trade.
- Houses under historic review. If your home sits in a local historic district, ask your city's historic district commission or building department about a fixed exterior fixture before you plan anything.
A lease sidesteps all of this. The C9 runs hang on clips made to grip shingles and gutters without harm. We never use a staple or a nail, and every run comes off the house in January. For the full picture on older houses, read permanent lights on older and historic homes.
Paying up front
This is the drawback most people feel first. Permanent pricing is $22–34 for each lit foot of roofline, and you pay it one time, for one install. The lease is priced at $18–32 a foot for each season it hangs, with a season minimum of $595. Each year's bill is smaller, but it comes back every autumn.
Here is how that looks on typical footage. A smaller two-story near downtown Rochester runs 100 to 150 feet across the front, and a two-story colonial there 120 to 180. In Troy, colonials with side-entry or three-car garages run 150 to 250, so the 250 ft row covers the largest of them.
| Front roofline | Permanent, paid once | Lease, one season | Lease, five seasons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 ft | $2,200–$3,400 | $1,800–$3,200 | $9,000–$16,000 |
| 180 ft | $4,000–$6,100 | $3,200–$5,800 | $16,000–$29,000 |
| 250 ft | $5,500–$8,500 | $4,500–$8,000 | $22,500–$40,000 |
Read the table in both directions. Over a single season, the lease comes in under the permanent install at every size, which is why it wins when you only expect one December in the house. Over five seasons the lease costs roughly four times as much. The real question is how many Decembers you expect to spend in the house, and whether you would rather pay once or pay each year. Peaks, dormers and a second story move any house within its band, which is why your own measurement matters more than any example.
Seeing it by day, on some trim
We match the channel to the color of the trim and tuck it into the shade of the roof edge, so from the street it mostly reads as trim.
The places it shows are low eaves over a garage or on a ranch, where you look up at it from the driveway, and gable rakes that face the street with no gutter to hide behind. If you plan to repaint or rewrap the trim, do that first, because the channel is matched once.
If any hardware on the house by day would bother you, a lease leaves the roofline bare from January to November, and the separate post on permanent lights in daylight walks through each of those spots.
What people worry about that is not a problem
A few objections come up often and do not hold up once you see how the system is built.
- Roof damage. Nothing we fasten touches a shingle. The channel is held on the fascia face, or up in the pocket below the drip edge.
- Michigan cold. The fixture is rated for Michigan winters. There are no filaments in a diode, so there is nothing to snap in a hard January freeze.
- A dead section in January. The runs are split into zones, so a failed run is found without pulling the rest off the house. Both the track and the diodes are under warranty.
- Looking like Christmas all year. Color, brightness and the schedule are set on your phone. Most nights that can mean a soft warm white, or nothing at all until you switch it on.
How we decide which to recommend
When we quote a house, we work through the same questions in this order. The first one that points to the lease usually settles it.
- Will you likely move within a year? If yes, we recommend the lease.
- Do you want the big-bulb December look, and only in December? If yes, the lease gives you exactly that.
- Can the trim safely hold a fastener for years? If the wood is fragile, historic, due for repair, or subject to review you have not done yet, we recommend the lease for now.
- Will a visible channel on a low eave bother you? If yes, we talk it through on site before you decide.
- How many Decembers will you spend here? If the answer is two or more and the trim is sound, permanent usually comes out ahead, and it gives you warm white, color and schedules the rest of the year too.
You can run the numbers before anyone calls you. Stand across the road, take a single level photo of your house's face, and open the LightCast measuring tool. It traces the roofline, tallies peaks and valleys, and works out both prices, permanent and leased, from one set of feet. The picture is processed in your browser and is never uploaded. If your trim is old or your plans are uncertain, say so when you request an estimate, and we will tell you plainly which option we would put on your house.
Questions about this
Can I start with a lease and switch to permanent later?
Yes. A lease is one season at a time, so nothing ties you to it. You can lease while trim repairs, a roof replacement or a possible move gets settled, then measure again for a permanent install in a later autumn.
Is the lease the better deal on a small house?
For one season, yes. A 60 ft ranch roofline runs $1,100 to $1,900 on a lease and $1,300 to $2,000 once for permanent. Over five seasons the lease adds up to $5,500 to $9,500, so if you are staying, permanent is the smaller number. The $595 season minimum only matters on very small displays.
Will permanent lights ever look like big C9 bulbs?
They can match the colors and patterns of a classic display, but not the bulbs themselves. The light comes from small diodes in a slim channel, so it reads as a line of points rather than a row of large faceted bulbs.
Where this applies
Typical roofline lengths and priced examples for these communities are on their own pages.