Permanent eave lights: where they mount and which way they face
Eave, rake, fascia, drip edge: a plain-English map of your roof edge, where a permanent channel actually sits on it, and what that means for the number of feet you light.
Eave, rake, fascia, soffit: the terms
Permanent eave lights sit on the fascia board or tuck beneath the drip edge, and the diodes point out from the house toward the street. The confusing part is that the roof edge packs several named parts into a few inches. Here is what each one is, and whether a permanent channel goes on it. Whether any of it can harm the roof is covered in do permanent Christmas lights damage your roof.
| Part | What it is | Does the channel mount here? |
|---|---|---|
| Eave | The level, lower edge of the roof where it hangs out past the wall. Gutters run along it. | Yes. This is the main line on most houses. |
| Rake | The sloped edge of a gable, running from the eave up to the ridge. | Yes, when you want the gable outlined. |
| Fascia | The vertical board that finishes the roof edge. On an eave it usually carries the gutter. | Yes. This is the mounting surface. |
| Drip edge | Thin metal flashing along the roof perimeter that sheds water off the edge and away from the fascia. | The channel can tuck in under its lip. |
| Soffit | The flat underside of the overhang, between the fascia and the wall. Often vented. | No. It sits behind and below the lit line. |
| Gable | The triangular wall beneath the point where two roof planes meet. | No. The rakes above it carry the light. |
| Shingles | The overlapping roof covering that keeps water out. | Never. |
Two of those terms get swapped constantly. People say eave when they mean the whole overhang, and they say soffit when they mean the edge they can see from the curb. From a lighting point of view the distinction is simple. The eave and the rake are the lines. The fascia and the drip edge are what the channel attaches to. The soffit and the gable wall are surfaces that sit inside the outline.
Where the channel mounts
A permanent channel is a slim aluminum profile holding a row of RGBW diodes. It goes in one of two places along any given edge.
On the face of the fascia
The fascia is a flat, continuous board that runs the full length of every eave and every rake. That makes it the natural rail for a rigid channel. The fasteners are chosen for whatever the board is made of. Across Macomb and Oakland County that might be painted wood, wood wrapped in aluminum coil, or a vinyl or composite board on a newer build. The channel is color-matched to that trim, so in daylight it reads as a thin line in the shadow of the roof edge.
Under the drip edge
Drip edge is bent metal flashing, usually an L profile or a T profile with a lower flange, that roofers set along the eaves and the rakes. Its job is to throw water off the roof edge and into the gutter, so it does not run down and rot the fascia. Because the flashing stands out over the top of the fascia, it leaves a sheltered lip where a low-profile channel can sit nearly out of sight from the street. For how the channel is cut, fastened and joined on install day, see how permanent lights are installed.
Which of the two suits an edge depends on how the flashing and trim meet there, and one house can use both. What never changes is the rule. No fastener pierces a shingle, and no shingle gets pried up to hide a mount. Our crews clean roofs all year, and we treat shingles the same way on a lighting job.
What about the gutter?
On an eave with a gutter, the channel still belongs to the fascia, not to the gutter itself. A gutter fills with ice and comes off when it is replaced. We cover that trade-off in detail in why the channel goes on fascia, not gutters.
Which way the diodes face
A diode throws its light forward, in a cone. Whatever sits in front of that cone is what gets lit. Mounted on the fascia or in the drip edge lip, the channel sits on a vertical surface at the very edge of the roof, so the diodes look straight out from the house, toward the street. The result is a crisp line of points that traces the roof shape: level along each eave, climbing each rake, meeting at the peak.
- What it lights: the edge itself. You see the outline of the house, in whatever color and brightness you set.
- What it is not built to light: the soffit behind it or the siding below it. Some glow reaches the trim, but the channel is aimed to draw the edge, not wash the wall. A fixture set under the overhang and aimed down at the wall is a different kind of product with a different job, and it is not what a permanent roofline channel does.
- What the neighbors see: a line of points tracing the roof shape after dark, and in daylight a thin color-matched strip that is barely visible.
In daylight, the drip edge above and the fascia behind leave little of the channel exposed, and because it is color-matched to the trim it is barely visible from the street.
Gables and rakes
Every gable adds two rakes, one on each side of the peak. The rake has its own fascia board, usually called a rake board, and roofers run drip edge up it as well as along the eaves. So the channel follows the same two mounting options all the way to the ridge.
Rakes are where a lit outline gets its character. A ranch lit only along its level eave looks like a long horizontal line. Light the rakes of the front gable too and the house suddenly has a shape: a roofline you would recognize in a silhouette.
Rakes also behave differently from eaves in three practical ways:
- No gutter in the way. The rake board is usually fully exposed, which makes it the cleanest mount on the house.
- A slope to follow. The channel runs at the pitch of the roof, and the two rakes meet in a mitered joint at the peak.
- More footage than it looks. A rake is the sloped side of a triangle, so it is always longer than the half of the gable it spans. The steeper the pitch, the bigger that gap.
Short eave returns, the little stubs of eave that turn the corner at the base of some gables, are part of the same outline. Whether you wrap them is a design choice we settle with you.
Hip roofs vs gable roofs
The shape of your roof decides how many of these edges you have. A gable roof has two sloping planes meeting at a ridge, with triangular end walls. It has eaves on two sides and rakes on the other two. A hip roof slopes down on all four sides, so it has eaves and gutters the whole way around and, on a simple hip, no rakes at all.
That matters for lighting more than most people expect. The hip lines, the diagonal seams that run from each corner up to the ridge, are shingled all the way up. There is no fascia board on a hip and no drip edge, just shingles capped with more shingles. Since nothing mounts through a shingle, a hip line is not somewhere a permanent channel goes.
| Roof shape | Lit lines available | What the outline looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Simple gable | Two eaves plus the rakes on each gable end | Level lines and triangles |
| Simple hip | Eaves on all four sides | One level band wrapping the house |
| Hip with front gables | Eaves all around plus the rakes on each gable | A band with peaks rising out of it |
Ranches around here come in both shapes and plenty of mixtures, often a hip main roof with a gable over the garage or entry. On a plain hip ranch, the lit outline is a clean single line at the eave. Add a front gable and you add two rakes, a peak and a lot of shape for a small amount of footage. For help deciding which of those lines to light on your house, read which roofline edges to light.
What this means for your measurement
Everything above comes down to one idea when it is time to price the job: you are paying for lit lines, not surfaces. The soffit, the gable wall and the roof field add nothing. What you count is the length of every eave and rake the channel runs along, plus the peaks where it turns.
- Count the eaves you want lit. On most houses that is the full front, and sometimes the garage and porch roofs.
- Add the rakes of every gable you want outlined. Measure the slope, not the width of the gable.
- Leave out hip lines. They are shingled and never carry a channel.
- Note the peaks. Each one is a mitered joint, and more peaks push a house toward the top of the $22–34 range per lit foot.
For scale, a single-story ranch in Macomb Township often has 60 to 80 feet of front roofline. At 60 feet a permanent install comes to $1,300–$2,000 once, and at 80 feet $1,800–$2,700. A hip ranch lands lower in the band, a ranch with two front gables higher. The guide to measuring your roofline walks through the counting by hand.
Or skip the tape measure. Stand across the street, take one straight-on photo, and open the LightCast measuring tool. A gable facing the street sits flat to the camera, so its rakes come through at true length. Tap your garage door for scale. The tool traces the eaves and rakes, tallies the peaks, and prices the house both ways from one set of feet. Everything is worked out on the page itself; your photo is never uploaded. Happy with the figure? Request your estimate with it attached. We confirm within 24 hours and walk every edge on site before a single foot of channel is ordered.
Questions about this
Can permanent lights go on the underside of the overhang instead of the edge?
A permanent roofline channel belongs at the outer edge, fastened to the fascia or set in the lip of the flashing. Set on the underside of the overhang it would face the ground or the wall, and it would no longer draw the outline of the roof, which is the whole point of eave lighting.
Will the channel block my soffit vents?
No. The channel runs along the fascia at the outer edge of the overhang, and the vented underside sits behind and below it, so the channel is not mounted over the vent openings.
My house has a hip roof. Can I still get peaks lit?
Only where the house actually has gables. A simple hip roof has eaves on all four sides and no rakes, so the lit outline is one level line. If there is a gable over the garage or front entry, its rakes can be lit, and that is where your peaks come from.