Professional vs retail
Installing Permanent Lights Yourself vs Hiring Out
DIY permanent lighting is a real option on some houses and a bad idea on others. An honest look at what the work involves before you commit to it.
We install this for a living, so take the following with that in mind. But we would rather give you an honest picture than pretend DIY is never sensible, because on some houses it clearly is.
Where DIY genuinely works
A single-story home. A simple roofline without much geometry. Ladder access you are comfortable with, on level ground, without landscaping pressed against the foundation. A willingness to accept visible wire, or a product where that does not bother you.
If that describes your house and you enjoy this kind of work, you will save a substantial amount of money and end up with lights on your house. There is no trick here.
What the work actually involves
This is the part that is hard to size up from a product page, so here is the sequence, in the order you would hit it.
- 01
Get to the roofline safely, repeatedly
A two-story Eastside home with a steep roof is a different job. On plenty of Issaquah and Bellevue hillside lots the ground itself is on a slope, which means the ladder is too. That is where this stops being a Saturday project.
- 02
Hold a straight run over distance
Small deviations become very obvious across forty feet of roofline, and you cannot see them from a ladder six feet away. You see them from the street, afterwards.
- 03
Cut and fit the track
Track has to be cut to length, fitted around corners, and joined at transitions. Doing it cleanly on the first attempt, at height, is a skill rather than a step.
- 04
Decide what not to light
Where a run should skip a section, spacer cables bridge the gap. Knowing where those belong is design judgment, and it is what most separates installations that look intentional from ones that look improvised.
- 05
Place power and the controller
The control box needs standard 110V power, accessible placement for future service, network range for app control, and somewhere it will not become a visual focal point. Those four constraints do not always point at the same spot.
The time, honestly
For a straightforward single-story house: a weekend, if it goes well.
For a two-story home with real roofline geometry: considerably more, spread across whichever weekends the Pacific Northwest gives you dry weather in November. That last constraint catches people out.
What you are actually buying when you hire out
Not just labor. Design judgment about where lights belong, experience with what a given roofline needs, the equipment to reach it safely, and someone who is responsible if it goes wrong.
And a workmanship warranty. Ours runs three years and covers how the system was installed: track placement and attachment, wiring concealment, component mounting. If you install it yourself, that responsibility is yours.
The middle ground people forget
If cost is the reason for considering DIY, seasonal installation is worth pricing before you buy a permanent kit. Professionally installed temporary lights are a much smaller outlay per year, you get the design judgment and the ladder work handled, and nothing stays on the house.
It costs more over a long enough horizon. But it is a real option and it is often the right answer for someone whose actual objection is the size of the upfront number.
How to decide
Three questions.
Can you work safely at the height your roofline requires, in November weather, more than once? Does visible wire in daylight bother you? And how much is a weekend of your time worth against the difference in price?
If the answers point to DIY, do it properly and take the safety part seriously.
What professional installation involves · Why professional systems cost more
