Permanent Lights, Roofline Lights, Soffit LEDs: What Are They Actually Called?

There is no agreed name for this product. Homeowners call it permanent Christmas lights. Roofers call it roofline lighting. Builders say soffit LEDs. Search engines see all of it, and every installer's website picks a different one — which is why shopping for it feels harder than it should.

One Product, About Twenty Names

The reason for the name chaos is that this product arrived without a category. String lights had a name. Landscape lighting had a name. A permanently installed, app-controlled, colour-changing LED channel that runs along your roofline showed up in the mid-2010s with nothing to be called, so everyone described it by whichever part mattered most to them.

Broadly, the names fall into four buckets: where the lights go, when people use them, what they do, and whose brand you saw first.

Names Based on Where They Go

These are the most literal terms, and they're usually used by people who have already seen the product installed and are describing its position on the house.

• Roofline lights / roofline LED lights — the most accurate description of a standard install. The track follows the roofline.
• Soffit LEDs / soffit lights / under soffit lights — used when the channel is mounted to the underside of the eave rather than the vertical fascia board. Both mounting positions are normal; which one suits your home depends on your eave depth and trim.
• Roof edge lights / outdoor roof lights — same idea, less common phrasing.
• House outline lights — a good plain-English description of the effect: the lights trace the shape of the house.
• Hidden roofline lights — refers to the fact that a properly installed channel is colour-matched to your trim and largely disappears in daylight. The lights are hidden; the effect isn't.
• Fascia lights / trim lights / eave lights — trade terms for the same mounting surfaces.

Names Based on When People Use Them

This is where the largest share of searches sit, because most people meet the product while trying to solve a Christmas problem.

• Permanent Christmas lights — by volume, the single most common name people search for.
• Year-round Christmas lights / built-in Christmas lights — same meaning, emphasising that they stay up.
• Permanent holiday lights / holiday lights for your house — broader phrasing that covers Halloween, Diwali, Canada Day and everything else the system runs.

The Christmas framing undersells the product. A system installed for December ends up running warm white on ordinary evenings, orange in late October, and team colours during a playoff run. If you're weighing the cost, that year-round use is a large part of the answer — we go through it in are permanent lights worth it.

Names Based on What They Do

• Colour changing house lights / colour changing roof lights — describes the RGB capability. Each node can be set independently, which is what makes patterns possible rather than just one flat colour.
• App controlled house lights / smart exterior lights — describes the control method. Scheduling, scenes and colour selection all happen on a phone.
• Permanent RGB house lights — the technical shorthand. Quality systems add a dedicated warm-white diode alongside the red, green and blue, which is usually written RGBW. That fourth diode is why a good system can produce a clean warm white instead of the slightly blue-green "white" that RGB-only strips fall back on.
• Permanent outdoor LED lights / permanent exterior lights / permanent house lights / exterior house LED lights — generic catch-alls, most often used by people comparing several installers at once.

Brand Names People Use as Generic Terms

Some homeowners describe the category using whichever brand they saw first — the way people say Kleenex for tissue. If you've heard of Gemstone, Trimlight, Jellyfish or Oelo, those are individual manufacturers and installer networks, not the name of the product category. Govee is a different thing again: a consumer DIY light strip you install yourself, not a professionally installed channel system.

We've written direct comparisons where the differences are worth knowing: Starise vs Gemstone, Starise vs Trimlight, and Starise vs Govee.

The One Name That's Genuinely Ambiguous

"Soffit lights" is the term to be careful with, because it has meant something else for decades.

• Soffit lights (traditional) — recessed pot lights set into the underside of the eave, pointing down at the ground. Fixed white, hardwired, usually four to ten of them across a facade. An electrician's job.
• Soffit LEDs (permanent lighting) — a continuous track of small colour-changing nodes running the length of the eave, controlled by an app. A lighting installer's job.

If you ask three companies to quote "soffit lighting," you can easily get two quotes for pot lights and one for a permanent system. Say which effect you want — downlight pools on the driveway, or a continuous line of light along the edge of the roof — and the ambiguity disappears.

What Permanent Lights Are Not

• Not string lights or C9 bulbs. Traditional Christmas strings clip to the gutter and come down in January. Permanent lighting is a fixed channel screwed to fascia or soffit.
• Not rope light or tape light. Adhesive-backed LED tape is not built for −40°C, UV exposure or snow load, and it isn't individually addressable.
• Not landscape or path lighting. That's a separate ground-level system. It can complement permanent lighting but doesn't replace it.
• Not a DIY light strip. Consumer strips exist and some are decent, but they are a different product class with different mounting, weatherproofing and lifespan expectations — see Starise vs DIY.
• Not a subscription service. Seasonal rental companies hang lights each November and take them back in January. You own a permanent system outright.

The Plain-English Glossary

These are the words that come up in quotes and on install day. None of them are complicated once you've seen them once.

• Channel (also track, extrusion) — the aluminium housing screwed to your fascia or soffit that holds the lights and takes the weather. Colour-matched to your trim so it reads as part of the house in daylight.
• Puck / node — one individually addressable light inside the channel. Nodes sit roughly eight inches apart on our Gen 2 system, which is what produces a continuous line rather than a row of dots.
• Addressable — each node can be a different colour at the same time. Non-addressable systems can only do one colour at once across the whole run.
• RGBW — red, green and blue diodes plus a dedicated white one. Sixteen million colours, and a warm white that actually looks warm.
• IP68 — the waterproofing rating. The higher the second digit, the more submersion the housing survives. IP68 is the top of the scale for this kind of hardware.
• 24V low voltage — the power the system runs at. It matters in Alberta: 24V holds brightness across long runs and cold better than 12V does. Full explanation in 12V vs 24V.
• Controller — the small box that turns app instructions into light. Usually mounted in the garage or near the panel.
• Transformer / power supply — steps household power down to 24V. Plugs into an exterior or garage outlet.
• Run — one continuous length of channel. Your quote is priced by total footage of run.
• Zone — a section you can control separately, such as the garage face versus the second storey.
• Scene / pattern — a saved colour arrangement you can recall from the app. Ours ship with tens of thousands of presets, and you can build your own.

What to Actually Ask For When You Call

Whichever name you use, an installer who knows the product will understand you. What changes the quote isn't the vocabulary — it's these four answers:

• Voltage. 12V or 24V, and why.
• Weather rating. The IP rating of the nodes, and the temperature range the system is rated to.
• Who installs it. Employees or subcontractors. It shows up in the finish.
• What the warranty covers, and for how long. Components and workmanship are usually two different numbers.

Our full list is in 10 questions to ask before hiring a permanent lighting installer. And if you want a number for your own home, footage is the main driver — how many feet does a Calgary home need walks through the measurement.