Permanent lights on older and historic homes

Why older houses get a closer look

Permanent roofline lighting can go on an older or historic home, and on many of them it looks right at home, a warm white line that follows the architecture. The difference from a newer house is the order of work. On a 1990s colonial we measure, quote and book. On a 1920s Tudor we first ask who else has a say in the exterior, and then we ask the trim itself.

Three things set older houses apart:

• The materials are hard to replace. Original fascia, rake boards and molding often have profiles that are hard to match with stock lumber. A hole in a new board is a small repair. A split in a hundred-year-old profile may not be.
• The roof edge is busier. Porches, bays, returns and steep gables break the eave into short runs, and some older houses have a built-up cornice where a newer house would have one flat board.
• Someone else may review the exterior. If the house is in a local historic district, a city commission may look at changes to how it appears from the street.

None of that rules permanent lighting out. It means the questions get answered before the order is placed, not after.

Finding out if your house is in a district

Start by separating two things people often mix up. A listing on the National Register of Historic Places is federal recognition. The National Park Service states that listing places no federal restrictions or requirements on a private owner, while noting that state or local preservation laws may still apply. A local historic district is different. In Michigan, local districts are created community by community, and the State Historic Preservation Office counts 82 communities whose local laws let them appoint a commission with design review authority.

So a bronze plaque or a National Register mention does not answer the question. Your city does. Here is the order we suggest:

1. Look on your city's website for a historic district commission, a historic preservation page or a map of designated districts.
2. Call the planning or building department with your address and ask plainly whether the property is inside a local district.
3. Ask whether the house is listed as contributing or non-contributing, since some cities treat the two differently.
4. Check your association separately. A neighborhood association's architectural guidelines are a different process from a city commission. Our guide to HOA approval for permanent lights covers that side.

What we found on the official city sites for the three areas where these questions come up most:

• Birmingham has a Historic District Commission, and the city's planning pages list its designated districts, including the Mill Pond Neighborhood, Shain Park, the Merrill, Townsend, Brown neighborhood and Bates Street. Meeting dates and agendas are posted on the commission's page, usually the week before each meeting.
• Rochester lists a Historical Commission and a Historic District Study Committee on the city website. Neither page says which homes, if any, fall under design review, so call City Hall with your address.
• The Grosse Pointes are separate cities, so the answer depends on which one you live in. The City of Grosse Pointe's council voted in March 2021 to suspend its historic district study and disbanded the study committee. Grosse Pointe Farms lists a Historic District Commission on its city site. In the Park, the Woods or the Shores, ask your own city hall.

What to ask your commission

We do not tell anyone what their commission will decide, and we do not state rules on its behalf. What we can do is give you the questions that get a clear answer in one call instead of three.

1. Does a fixed exterior light fixture on the roof edge need review at all? Ask about a fixture mounted to the fascia, not a string of seasonal bulbs, since those may be treated differently.
2. If it does, who reviews it? Some cities let planning staff sign off on small changes. Birmingham's published guidelines, for example, describe staff approval for work with minimal impact and name lighting among the examples. Whether that fits your project is the commission's call.
3. Which standards will the review use? The state preservation office says commissions review exterior work against the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, and Birmingham's guidelines adopt them by name.
4. Do all sides of the house count? Ask whether the street elevation is treated differently from the side and rear.
5. What does the application need, and when is it due? Ask for the form, the deadline ahead of the next meeting, and whether you or your contractor should submit it.

Write down who you spoke with and what they said. If the answer is "no review needed," that note is worth keeping with your house papers.

What to bring to a review

A commission is judging how the house will look and what the work does to it. Bring material that answers those two things without anyone having to picture it.

Two of the Secretary of the Interior's ten standards are worth reading before you go. One says distinctive features and craftsmanship that characterize a historic property should be preserved. Another says new additions and related new construction should be done so that, if removed later, the essential form and integrity of the property would be unimpaired. Ask whether your commission reads a roofline fixture that way. Either way, your photos and notes should speak to both ideas.

A commission judges how the house looks from the street by day, so daytime photos matter more than night shots. Our guide to how permanent lights look by day walks through where the channel tends to disappear and where it can show.

Inspecting original trim first

Approval settles whether the fixture may go up. The trim settles whether it should. We inspect the roof edge from a ladder before we quote an older house, and this is what we look at, in order.

1. What the edge is made of. Original wood, a later replacement board, aluminum wrap over wood, or a built-up cornice with crown molding. Each takes a different fastener, and a cornice with no flat face may take none.
2. Whether the wood is sound. Old fascia can look fine under paint and be soft behind it. Corners, joints and the ends of runs, where water sits longest, get checked by hand.
3. What the wrap is hiding. Aluminum coil over an old board keeps it looking tidy, but it can cover rot. We look at seams and cut ends before trusting the wood beneath.
4. How old the paint is. The EPA notes that a home built before 1978 is more likely to have lead-based paint. Driving a fastener disturbs paint, so tell us the year your house was built when you call.
5. Where the gutters hang. Our channel attaches to the fascia board or sits beneath the drip edge, never on the gutter itself, so we map the hangers and plan the line around them. The trade-offs of that choice are in our guide to mounting on fascia rather than gutters.

If the wood is sound, we choose fasteners for that substrate and fit the channel piece by piece around porches, bays and returns. If it is not, we say so before quoting: the trim needs a carpenter's repair first, or it should carry nothing and the lease is the answer. On a Birmingham Tudor under slate and copper, or a Pointes house with steep gables, that inspection matters as much as any commission letter.

What an older roofline costs

An older home is priced from the same single band as any other, $22–34 per lit foot of roofline with one install, but it can sit toward the top of that range, because short runs, returns and steep gables mean more cuts and more corners. Our Rochester, Birmingham and Grosse Pointe pages list footage by house type rather than by age, so read an older house against the type closest to its size and shape. Tudors and other period styles vary too much for one typical figure, and we measure those one house at a time.

Your own house may fall anywhere in its band. Peaks, dormers and a second story all move it, which is why a measurement of your roofline beats any example.

When the lease is the better call

If the commission says no and the commission confirms a seasonal display needs nothing from you, a seasonal C9 lease on clips is usually the right answer. The same holds while a review is pending or when the trim should not carry a mount, and our look at the downsides of permanent lights explains how we make that call.

Before you call the city, take one level photo of the house from across the street and load it into the LightCast measuring tool. You get lengths and a peak count you can hand to a commission, plus a priced range, all worked out in your browser with the photo never uploaded. When you ask for an estimate, mention the year the house was built and anything the city told you, and we will look at the trim before we quote.

Where this applies

Typical roofline lengths and priced examples for these communities are on their own pages.

• Rochester
• Birmingham
• Grosse Pointe
• Northville

Sources

1. Historic District Commission, City of Birmingham bhamgov.org
2. Designated Historic Districts, City of Birmingham bhamgov.org
3. Historic District Ordinance, Regulations and Guidelines, City of Birmingham bhamgov.org
4. Historical Commission, City of Rochester ci.rochester.mi.us
5. Historic District Study Committee, City of Rochester ci.rochester.mi.us
6. Historic Preservation Study Committee information, City of Grosse Pointe grossepointecity.org
7. Historic District Commission, City of Grosse Pointe Farms grossepointefarms.org
8. Local Historic Districts, Michigan State Historic Preservation Office miplace.org
9. National Register of Historic Places FAQs, National Park Service nps.gov
10. Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, National Park Service nps.gov
11. Sources of lead, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency epa.gov