Roofline lighting layout: which lines to light and which to skip

Start with the main eave

The main eave is the first line to light on almost any house. It is the longest level edge on the elevation, it sets the width of the house after dark, and every other line hangs off it: street-facing gables next, then the garage, with dormers, porch roofs and bump-outs decided last.

Which eave counts as the main one depends on the roof. On a hip roof the eave runs level around every corner, so the front is one unbroken line from end to end. On a gable roof the front eave stops where the gable ends begin, and the rakes at each end become their own question. On a two-story with a lower roof along the first floor, pick the upper line if you pick one, because it sits against the sky; the colonial guide covers lighting both. Lighting only the lower line leaves the dark second floor floating above it with no outline.

A quick test before anything else: stand at the curb at dusk and trace the top edge of the house with a finger held at arm's length. That silhouette is what a lit roofline shows from the street. Any line inside it is an extra, and extras are where layout decisions get made.

Gables frame the house

A front-facing gable is the strongest shape on most elevations. Two rakes climbing to a peak read as a roof from a block away, and they make a house look like a house at night instead of a lit shelf. If a gable faces the street, it belongs in the layout.

Three rules hold on nearly every gable:

1. Both rakes or neither. A single lit rake looks like a run that failed, not a design choice.
2. Carry it all the way up. Stopping below the ridge leaves a gap exactly where the eye goes first. The channel is mitered where the rakes meet so the peak reads as a clean point.
3. Join it to the eave. Where the rakes drop to the main eave, the lit line should turn the corner without a break, so gable and eave read as one outline.

Nested gables are where judgment comes in. Plenty of elevations have a small gable set in front of a larger one, or a garage gable overlapping the main roof. Lighting both gives you two stacked chevrons. That can look deliberate when the peaks sit well apart in height, and cluttered when the small peak tucks just under the big one. When in doubt, light the outer edge, the one that meets the sky, and leave the inner one dark.

Gables also drive cost. Each peak means two angled cuts and a junction at the ridge, so a peak-heavy front lands higher in the $22–34 range than a plain one. On the gable-heavy Rochester Hills two-stories, where one front elevation can carry three, four or even six peaks, it is the main reason two neighbors with similar footage see different numbers. For the measuring side, read measuring gables and peaks for lights.

The garage roof

An attached garage is usually the second-longest roof edge on the front, and the one people are most tempted to leave dark. Light it. A dark garage beside a lit house reads as a separate building.

How the line runs depends on which way the garage roof faces:

• Garage eave toward the street. A level line, often a step lower than the main eave. Carry it to the far corner so the step down reads as part of the house.
• Garage gable toward the street. A second peak on the elevation. Light both rakes, then look at it beside the entry. Two gables of similar size look balanced. A big garage gable next to a small entry gable can pull attention away from the front door.
• Side-entry garage. A side-entry garage turns a long eave or full gable end to the street, a natural candidate for its own zone.

Dormers and small roofs

Dormers are the small gabled or shed-roofed boxes that sit on the slope of the main roof. Each gabled dormer adds a peak, two short rakes and usually a pair of short returns, so three of them across a roof pack a lot of corners into not much footage.

Dormers are worth lighting when they are:

• matched in size and evenly spaced, so the lit shapes repeat across the roof like a rhythm,
• big enough to read from the curb, not only from the driveway,
• set well above the main eave, so their outlines do not crowd the lit line below.

Skip them when a single small dormer sits off to one side, when they sit so low that their outline and the eave merge into one jagged line, or when the roof already carries two or more lit gables. A shed dormer behaves differently. Its front edge is a short level line, and lit, it reads as a second eave. That works across a wide roof and looks stranded on a narrow one.

Porches and bump-outs

A front porch roof sits low and close to the door, which makes it the one small roof that often earns its footage. A little gabled roof over the entry frames the door with its own lit peak and gives the whole elevation a focal point. A long shed roof across a full-width porch reads as a second eave at first-floor height, which suits farmhouse and craftsman fronts.

Bump-outs work the other way. A projecting room, a bay window or a boxed-out stair landing each brings a short roof with inside and outside corners. Lit, those pieces make a stop-start line with gaps where the walls step in and out, and from the street it reads less like an outline and more like a row of dashes.

A useful rule of thumb: if a lit piece would be shorter than a single garage door is wide, about 9 feet, ask whether it adds anything to the view from the sidewalk. Sometimes it does, as with an entry gable. More often it is two cuts nobody notices.

Busy elevations: when less reads better

Outlining every edge sounds like the safest way to get your money's worth, and on a simple house it is. On a busy elevation, with a main gable, a garage gable, two dormers, an entry porch and a bump-out, lighting everything turns the front into a wireframe drawing with nowhere for the eye to settle.

A better method is to rank the lines and light from the top down:

Symmetry is the second test. On a symmetrical house, with a center entry and matching dormers or matching gables on each side, light in pairs or not at all. Lighting one of two identical dormers makes the house look crooked. On an asymmetrical house, balance by weight: a lit garage gable at one end can be answered by a lit entry gable nearer the other.

Zoning gives you a middle path. A secondary line such as the dormers can be planned as its own zone, lit for the holidays and switched off from your phone on ordinary evenings. Ask at the estimate how your elevation would be split.

Each line you add is still footage at $22–34 per lit foot. Take an elevation where the main eave, gables and garage come to 100 feet: that is $2,200–$3,400, installed once. Add dormers and a porch roof to bring it to 130 feet and the range becomes $2,900–$4,400. On West Bloomfield lake-belt colonials, which often carry 150 to 250 feet on the street side alone, ranking the lines is where most of the price is decided.

Seeing it before you pay

Layout questions settle fastest on your own house. Give the LightCast measuring tool one curbside photo, taken square to the front, and it finds the roofline, then draws lights along it in the palette you choose. Once you mark a known reference, such as the garage door, the drawn lines become linear feet and a price range.

It also counts the shape of the trace:

1. Peaks. A point the traced line climbs to from both sides, like the top of a gable or a dormer.
2. Valleys. A point the line drops to from both sides, like the low spot where two gables meet.
3. Runs. The straight segments in the trace. More runs means more cuts and corners on the finished install.

To compare layouts, measure twice. Let detection outline the full silhouette and note the footage and peak count. Then press Clear (your scale stays set), switch to manual mode, tap along only the lines you want, and press New string before each separate piece, such as an entry gable or a pair of dormers. The gap between the two totals is what the extra lines add, and you can download a picture of each version to compare. For the measuring itself, see how many feet of lights you need.

The photo is never uploaded, and the final layout and footage are confirmed on site before anything is ordered. When one version looks right, request an estimate with that footage and we will confirm within 24 hours. If you are still deciding how many sides to light, start with lighting only the front of the house.

Where this applies

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

• Rochester Hills
• West Bloomfield