Permanent lights on a two-story colonial
Two eave lines, a front gable, a garage and a lot of ladder. Here is how a Macomb or Oakland County colonial gets lit, and what it costs.
The colonial roofline
A permanent system on a two-story colonial starts with the upper eave, the long level edge under the main roof at second-story height. Both rakes of the front gable come next, then the garage, and the lower eave over a porch or garage roof is an optional second line. A typical two-story colonial front runs about 120 to 180 feet, or $2,600–$6,100 installed once.
The shape is why the colonial lights so well. Drive through the subdivisions of Troy, Sterling Heights or Macomb Township and the same bones repeat: a rectangular two-story box under a side-gable roof, a front door near the middle, an attached garage off one end. From the street that gives you a small set of distinct lines.
- The upper eave. One long, straight edge across the full width of the house, high enough to be seen several houses away.
- The lower eave. The first-story roof edge over a covered porch, a bay or the garage, running parallel to the upper line and well below it.
- The front gable. Many colonials break the main roof with a gable over the entry or over one side of the front. Two sloped rakes meet at a peak.
- The garage gable. A garage that faces the street usually has its own gable, lower than the house and closer to the curb.
- The side gable ends. The rakes climbing each end wall. They show from an angle, not straight on.
Which of those lines you light decides your footage, and your footage decides your price. The general rules for picking lines are in the roofline layout guide. This post is about how they play out on a colonial.
Upper eave, lower eave, or both
A colonial has two level lines stacked on the same elevation, and choosing between them is the first design decision. Here is how the three options look after dark.
- Upper eave only. The cleanest look. One unbroken line crowns the house, and the whole two-story box reads as a lit shape from down the street. If you light one line on a colonial, make it this one.
- Lower eave only. Warm and close to the porch, but it leaves the top half of the house dark. From a distance it looks like a ranch parked in front of a dark wall. It works best when the upper eave is hidden by mature trees.
- Both eaves. Two parallel lines give the strongest outline and make a colonial look wider and more finished. It adds footage, usually the length of the porch or garage roof, and it asks the most of the design, because two lines have to agree with each other.
If you run both, set them up as separate zones. Warm white on the upper eave with the lower line dimmed a step keeps the house from looking like a stack of stripes, and on the holidays both lines can switch to color together. Zones, brightness and schedules are all set from your phone, so you can try the two-line look for a week and turn the lower line off if you prefer the single crown.
One practical note: the lower eave is often a short roof that stops short of the house corners. A lower line that ends where the porch roof ends looks deliberate. A lower line that stops at a downspout does not.
The front gable and garage gable
Gables are where a colonial gets its character, and where most of the price variation lives. Every peak means two sloped runs, angled cuts where they meet, and more time at height. That does not change the rate, but it pushes a gabled colonial higher within the $22–34 band.
The front gable. Light both rakes all the way to the peak, or leave the gable dark. One lit side makes the house look lopsided. If the gable sits over the entry, it frames the front door and becomes the focal point of the whole elevation, which usually earns its footage. If it is a small decorative gable set into a long eave, the eave line can simply run beneath it.
The garage gable. On many colonials the garage steps forward of the house, so its gable is the closest lit shape to the street and reads larger than it is. It sits at first-story height, which makes it the easiest part of the house to reach and a natural anchor for one end of the display.
The detail to watch is how the two gables line up. When the garage gable and the front gable are close in size, lighting both gives the front a balanced rhythm of peaks. When the garage gable is much smaller, it can look like an afterthought beside a full-height house gable, and a straight run across the garage eave may read better. Measure the sloped rakes along their length, not across the width of the gable, since that is the footage the channel actually covers.
Side-entry garages
Some colonials have a side-entry garage: the doors face the side yard or a turn in the driveway, and the street sees a garage wall with no doors in it. It changes the layout in three ways.
- More house, less door. The garage's street face is either a long eave or a gable wall with windows in it, which gives you more roofline on the front for the same house width. That pushes a side-entry colonial toward the upper end of the footage range.
- The door side is a second view. You see the garage doors every time you pull in. Lighting the eave over them is a small, separate run that you mostly enjoy yourself, so decide on it separately from the street elevation.
- A different reference for measuring. The measuring tool scales your photo from something of known size. A garage door is ideal, but on a side-entry house it is not in the straight-on shot. Tap the front door or a standard window instead, which the tool treats as 3 feet.
If the garage wing is set back from the front of the house, it also creates an inside corner where the two rooflines meet. Carry the upper eave to the house corner, and treat the garage as its own short run rather than forcing one line around the step.
Footage and price on a typical colonial
The rate is $22–34 per lit foot, and you pay it one time. Colonials land in that band according to how many peaks they carry, whether you light one eave or two, and how much trim detail the channel has to follow. Here are the three rows of our price table that span a typical colonial front, with the seasonal lease beside them for comparison.
| Front roofline | Permanent, installed once | Seasonal C9 lease, per year | Lease over 5 seasons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 120 ft | $2,600–$4,100 | $2,200–$3,800 | $11,000–$19,000 |
| 150 ft | $3,300–$5,100 | $2,700–$4,800 | $13,500–$24,000 |
| 180 ft | $4,000–$6,100 | $3,200–$5,800 | $16,000–$29,000 |
As a rough guide to where your house falls:
- Near 120 feet: upper eave, one front gable and a front-facing garage on a compact colonial.
- Near 150 feet: the same house with the lower eave added, or a wider front with two gables.
- Near 180 feet and up: side-entry garages, three-car garages, two lit eaves plus two gables, or a corner lot where a side elevation joins the front.
Colonial footage shifts from town to town, and each city page carries its own local numbers. See the notes for colonials in Troy, two-stories in Macomb Township, lake-belt colonials in West Bloomfield and Sterling Heights front elevations. For how each lit foot is counted and what sits inside the rate, read the cost per foot breakdown.
A single-story house is a different job with different math. If you are comparing, the ranch house guide and the split-level guide cover those shapes.
Ladder work at two stories
The colonial's upper eave is the hardest part of the house to light yourself. It sits at second-story height, which means an extension ladder, often set on sloped lawn, in a foundation bed, or on a driveway that is already icy in late November. Reaching around a porch roof or a bay to get to the eave above it makes the setup harder still.
The numbers back up the caution. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says nearly half of holiday decorating injuries involve falls. Setup matters as much as height. NIOSH puts the proper angle for an extension ladder at about 75.5 degrees and warns that a ladder set too shallow can slide out at the bottom.
A permanent system moves all of that ladder work into one autumn visit, done by crews who work at roof height all year cleaning roofs and gutters. After that, the upper eave is something you change from your phone. If you would rather keep a December-only display, the seasonal C9 lease puts the ladder work on us instead: we hang it in November, repair any outage mid-season, and bring it all down in January.
Your next step is a number for your own colonial. Stand across the street far enough back to fit both stories and the garage in one straight-on photo, then measure your colonial with the LightCast tool. It finds the upper eave, counts the gables and prices the run in your browser, and if it misses the lower eave you can tap it in by hand. When the lines look right, send that footage through the estimate form, and you will hear back within 24 hours to confirm the request. The final number is checked on site before anything is ordered.
Questions about this
Do I need to light the side gable ends of a colonial?
Usually not. The rakes on each end wall show only from an angle, so the upper eave can simply stop at the front corners. The exception is a corner lot, where one gable end faces a second street and deserves the same treatment as the front.
What if my colonial has a hip roof instead of gables?
Then the upper eave simply wraps the corners instead of meeting a rake. There are fewer peaks, so the footage is mostly straight eave, which tends to sit lower in the $22–34 band. Decide how far around each corner to carry the line so both ends match.
Can the upper and lower eaves show different colors?
Yes, if they are set up as separate zones. The upper eave can run warm white every evening while the lower line stays off, or both can switch to the same holiday colors together. Everything is set from your phone.
Where this applies
Typical roofline lengths and priced examples for these communities are on their own pages.