Are Permanent Christmas Lights Worth It in Edmonton?

What Are Permanent Christmas Lights?

Permanent Christmas lights are LED lights installed along the soffits, fascia, eaves, peaks, and roofline of your home.

Unlike traditional Christmas lights, they do not come down in January.

The lights are installed inside slim aluminum tracks that are colour matched to the exterior of the home. Wiring is hidden inside the track and the entire lighting system is controlled through an app.

That means you can use red and green lights at Christmas without your house looking like Christmas for the other eleven months of the year.

Permanent outdoor lighting can also be used for Halloween, Canada Day, Oilers games, birthdays, parties, or simple warm white architectural lighting on an ordinary evening.

How Much Do Permanent Christmas Lights Cost in Edmonton?

This is usually the biggest concern.

Empire Home Service charges approximately $20 per linear foot for residential permanent outdoor lighting in Edmonton.

As a general guide:

The actual cost depends on your linear footage, the number of peaks and gables, roof height, accessibility, how much of the home you want covered, and the lighting system being installed.

A simple bungalow with one straight roofline is obviously going to cost less than a large two storey Edmonton home with multiple peaks, garages, gables, and complicated rooflines.

For a deeper dive into the five factors that affect pricing, read our guide, How Much Do Permanent Christmas Lights Cost in Edmonton?

Why Do Permanent Christmas Lights Cost So Much Upfront?

You are not really buying Christmas decorations.

You are installing a permanent exterior lighting system.

A professional installation includes LED pixels, custom aluminum track, low voltage wiring, power equipment, a controller, mounting hardware, layout planning, installation, app configuration, and warranty coverage.

That is why permanent Christmas lights should be compared more closely with a home improvement than with a $100 box of lights from Canadian Tire.

Permanent Christmas Lights vs Seasonal Christmas Lights Over 5 and 10 Years

This is where the value becomes much easier to understand.

Seasonal Christmas lights have a low upfront cost, but they can become expensive if you pay for professional installation and removal every year.

A fair comparison should also consider more than the cost of the bulbs. Over time, seasonal lighting can involve installation, removal, storage, replacement strands, broken clips, extension cords, timers, repairs, and your own time.

Here is a simple example using a $2,400 permanent installation on an Edmonton bungalow.

These are simplified examples. Electricity, repairs, replacement equipment, and optional maintenance can affect either option.

The important point is not that permanent Christmas lights always save money.

They do not.

The real question is what are you currently spending every Christmas and what is your time worth?

If You Currently Pay Someone to Hang Your Christmas Lights

Permanent lighting becomes much easier to justify.

Imagine you spend $600 every year to have seasonal Christmas lights installed and removed.

After five years, you have spent $3,000.

After ten years, you have spent $6,000.

By comparison, a $2,400 permanent lighting installation is paid once. In this example, the permanent system becomes less expensive than the recurring seasonal service sometime around the fourth year.

You also get to use the permanent lights during the other eleven months of every year.

If You Install Christmas Lights Yourself

The financial argument is completely different.

If you already own your lights and happily install them yourself, permanent Christmas lights will probably not save you money.

You might only spend $100 or $200 occasionally replacing strands, clips, timers, or extension cords.

In that situation, you are buying permanent lighting primarily for convenience, safety, appearance, smart control, and year round use, not because it is cheaper.

That is an important distinction.

Are Permanent Christmas Lights Safer in Edmonton?

For many homeowners, this is one of the biggest reasons they are worth it.

Think about when Christmas lights normally go up in Edmonton.

It is often November or December. Temperatures may already be below freezing. Driveways can be icy. Snow can cover uneven ground. Gutters and rooflines may have frost or ice on them.

Now add an extension ladder and a two storey peak.

Then repeat the process when the lights need to come down.

Permanent Christmas lights reduce that repeated ladder work because the roofline installation is completed once. After that, turning your Christmas display on is something you can do from your phone.

Professional seasonal installation also keeps the homeowner off the ladder, but you continue paying someone to access the roofline every year.

For many homeowners, avoiding that yearly cycle is part of what makes permanent Christmas lights worth the cost.

Can Permanent Christmas Lights Handle Edmonton Winters?

They can, but this is where the quality of the lighting system matters.

Edmonton can experience temperatures approaching minus 40 degrees Celsius during extreme winter weather.

Permanent lights also deal with snow, ice, moisture, summer heat, ultraviolet exposure, and constant temperature changes.

A system that works well in a mild climate is not necessarily something you want permanently attached to an Edmonton home.

Empire Home Service installs Prairie Lighting, a Canadian permanent outdoor lighting system designed for harsh weather conditions.

Prairie Lighting uses IP68-rated system components, including 30mm Pro 24V RBGWW LED bulbs with individual control. The complete system is designed for operation down to -50°C in Edmonton's winter conditions.

Why Does RBGWW Matter?

Basic RGB lighting creates colours by combining red, green, and blue.

That works very well when you want Christmas colours.

It is less convincing when you want your house to simply look elegant on a Tuesday night in March.

RBGWW adds dedicated white-light capability rather than relying only on red, green, and blue LEDs to approximate white. Prairie Lighting's system can produce natural warm-white architectural lighting around 2700K while still providing full-colour holiday scenes.

For Edmonton homeowners who want to use their lights year round, that makes a major difference.

How Much Do Permanent Christmas Lights Cost to Run?

Not much compared with the installation itself.

Permanent Christmas lights use low voltage, energy efficient LEDs.

The actual electricity cost depends on the number of lights, brightness, colours, animations, and how many hours you use them.

For a typical Empire Home Service installation, normal residential usage is usually less than $10 per month.

You can also schedule the lights to automatically turn on in the evening and shut off later at night instead of leaving them running until morning.

For most homeowners considering a $2,000 to $5,000 permanent lighting system, electricity is not the factor that determines whether the investment makes sense.

The bigger question is how often you will actually use it.

Do Permanent Christmas Lights Have Value Outside Christmas?

This is where permanent lighting separates itself from seasonal Christmas lights.

Your temporary Christmas lights might be used for six weeks.

Permanent outdoor lights are available 365 days a year.

You can use them for Christmas, Halloween, Canada Day, Oilers games, birthdays, parties, or other holidays and events.

More importantly, you do not have to use colourful lighting at all.

A warm white roofline can highlight peaks, gables, entrances, garages, and other architectural features every evening.

The system becomes part Christmas lighting, part soffit lighting, and part exterior accent lighting.

For homeowners who regularly use the warm white setting, the cost per use becomes very different from traditional Christmas lights that spend most of the year sitting in a storage bin.

See real permanent lighting installations in our Edmonton lighting gallery.

What Are the Downsides of Permanent Christmas Lights?

The biggest downside is the upfront cost.

Spending $2,000 to $5,000 or more is difficult to justify if you rarely decorate or expect to move soon.

Permanent lighting may also not be right for you if you love traditional C9 Christmas bulbs and enjoy physically redesigning your display every year.

There is also a major difference between permanent lighting systems.

Track quality, weather sealing, controllers, LED size, white light quality, warranties, app reliability, replacement parts, and installation quality can all affect whether your permanent lights still feel like a good investment five or ten years later.

The cheapest quote is not necessarily the cheapest system to own long term.

When Are Permanent Christmas Lights Worth It?

Permanent Christmas lights make the most sense if several of these apply to you:

• You decorate your Edmonton home every Christmas
• You currently pay for seasonal Christmas light installation
• You plan to stay in your home for several years
• You want to stop climbing ladders
• You have a tall or complicated roofline
• You want app controlled lighting
• You want warm white exterior lighting during the rest of the year
• You want one lighting system for multiple holidays and events

If you check several of those boxes, permanent lighting becomes much easier to justify.

Common Questions

Permanent Christmas Lights Edmonton FAQs