Do you like ladders? How bout digging the ol' Christmas lights out of the crawl space? Not any more my friends. Introducing permanent decorative holiday lighting for your home.
Cheesy informercial intros aside, I just installed permanent holiday lights and I love them. They are designed to illuminate the siding of a house while tucked, out of view, underneath soffits. They stay up all year long and can be controlled with a smart phone app. Reference the image below for a better idea of what I'm talking about.
The product I went with is Govee Permanent Outdoor RGBIC Lights. They are IP67 rated and come with 75 Scene Modes. I purchased from Amazon.
Every light has a 3M VHB (Very High Bond) adhesive backing that is meant to form a semi-permanent connection with suitable material like plastic, vinyl, or wood. Time will tell whether they hold up but so far, they are bonding well. The light modules are 16.75 inches apart (on center). The distance from the illuminated surface dictates the shape of the light cone you get. Below is a close up image of the front porch.
The Govee phone app allows you to schedule the lights in very high detail. You can have a different scene every night of the year. You can even make your own animations. I have the house light up in Kelly Green whenever the Philadelphia Eagles play a night game.
"But what if I don't have a white house?" Don't worry, YouTube had plenty of examples of installs on light and dark colored siding/brick.
DIYing this is not trivial, however. Much planning is necessary. The 100' kit does come with two extension cables but you'll likely need to cut the strand mid-run if you come to the end of a roof section. Good news, cutting a strand is possible but you'll need the proper tools like a soldering iron if you want to properly extend a run. Not a big deal if you know me and live reasonably close. If not, time to learn a new skill ;)
This product only comes in white but the pro version can be purchased in black. Would be nice if you could get it to better match your house color but I'm sure there are ways around that. Color matched cable raceways perhaps. And they only work with Alexa, and Google Assistant at the moment. The app is good enough where that's not even an issue though.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with what this brings to my lighting scheme. And I'll be even happier when I don't have to take down the lights in wintery January weather.
