Outdoor Christmas Lights
EverLights vs Trimlight
Two permanent holiday lighting brands, neither of which publishes a price. What they do publish differs enough to decide between them.
Mike M. — The hands-on owner behind Iron Mako Media.
Published
This page contains affiliate links. If you buy through them we may earn a commission at no cost to you, and it never decides what we recommend. How this site is funded.
The verdict first. Trimlight publishes the stronger warranty — a lifetime product warranty on core components — and will only sell you a professional install through its dealer network. EverLights publishes a shorter warranty, one year labor and five years parts, but also sells DIY ClickLights kits, which means it is the only one of the two you can buy without a quote. If the warranty is what you are paying for, that is Trimlight. If you want the option of installing it yourself, that is EverLights.
What each company actually is
Trimlight describes itself as "professionally installed, programmable, exterior lighting with a patented channel design" and states plainly that it is "Professionally installed, Not DIY," fitted by "authorized, factory-trained Trimlight technicians" through "over 300 authorized dealerships nationwide." Its current app-controlled system is Trimlight Edge.
EverLights is based in Lindon, Utah, and sells a system it calls ClickLights, positioned as "professional grade lights made affordable." It offers both professional installation through dealers and in-house installers and DIY ClickLights kits you buy and fit yourself — which is the single biggest structural difference between the two companies.
Head to head, on published terms only
| EverLights | Trimlight | |
|---|---|---|
| Install model | Professional install or DIY ClickLights kits | Professionally installed, explicitly not DIY |
| Warranty | 1 year labor and 5 year parts | Lifetime product warranty on core components, stated as up to 50,000 hours of usage |
| Diode | RGBW — all colors plus true warm white | Energy-efficient LED; diode configuration not published on the brand site |
| Color range claim | Over 4 billion color options | Colors, patterns, schedules and scenes via the Trimlight Edge app |
| Published brightness | 70 lumens per light | Not published |
| Rated life | 50,000 hour life expectancy | Warranty framed around up to 50,000 hours of usage |
| Daylight appearance | "Invisible during the day" | "Barely noticeable during the day because of our patented channel design" |
| Channel | Mounted under trim and flashings; outward or downward facing | Patented channel, multiple colors to match the home, hides wires completely |
| Dealer network | Multiple locations; coverage not detailed on the brand site | Over 300 authorized dealerships nationwide |
| Scenes and presets | Over 200 patterns and presets | Colors, patterns, schedules and scenes; count not published |
| Published price | None — quote for install, shop for DIY kits | None — quote only |
The warranty is the honest center of the comparison
A permanent lighting system is a decade-long commitment to a product screwed to your fascia. The thing that matters in year three is not the color count, it is who pays. Trimlight publishes a lifetime product warranty on core components, framed around up to 50,000 hours of usage. EverLights publishes one year labor and five years parts.
Read the shape of those two terms, not just the headline numbers. Trimlight's is a product warranty — it covers the components, and labor terms are set through the dealer who installed it. EverLights splits the two explicitly: a year of labor coverage, five years on the parts themselves. Neither is a bad answer, but if you are the kind of buyer who chose a permanent system specifically to stop thinking about it, the longer product term is the one to weigh.
Install model is the real fork in the road
Trimlight will not sell you a box. The company states the system is professionally installed and not DIY, and routes every sale through one of its 300-plus authorized dealerships. That is a constraint, and it is also the product: a factory-trained installer on your roof and a single party responsible if water ever gets behind the fascia.
EverLights offers both paths. If your eave line is a safe ladder position throughout and you are comfortable with a weekend of careful work, the ClickLights DIY kits let you buy the system and fit it. If the house is high, steep, or over ground a ladder cannot be footed on safely, the professional route exists too. Having the choice is a genuine advantage in this category, where the access problem is the real reason people pay for installation.
Daylight appearance: read both claims carefully
EverLights says its system is "invisible during the day." Trimlight says its channel makes the system "barely noticeable during the day." We would treat the second wording as the more accurate description of what every system in this category achieves, including EverLights'.
Every permanent system is a physical channel mounted under the eave. A good installation color-matches the channel to the fascia and tucks it under the drip edge so it reads as trim from the street. That is the honest best case, and it is a good outcome. Standing under it on a bright afternoon, you will see a channel. Buy on the basis that the daylight appearance will be neat, not absent.
Color and control
EverLights publishes the more specific diode claim: RGBW, meaning a dedicated true-warm-white chip alongside the red, green and blue, with over 4 billion color options and 70 lumens per light. The dedicated white matters for the same reason it matters on DIY kits — a warm white mixed from RGB diodes reads cold and slightly off, and the white setting is what the house wears for eleven months.
Trimlight does not publish its diode configuration on the brand site, describing the system as energy-efficient LED and focusing on the Trimlight Edge app for colors, patterns, schedules and scenes. If the exact diode arrangement matters to you, that is a question for the dealer quote rather than something to infer.
Both are app-controlled with scheduling and scenes, and EverLights states control works "from anywhere in the world you have internet access." For practical purposes the control experience is comparable, and neither offers sequenced show programming in the way dedicated pixel controllers do — that is a different product class, covered in best Christmas light music controllers.
Neither publishes a price, and that is the real friction
Both companies sell installation by quote. That is normal for anything mounted to a building, because the cost depends on linear feet, elevations, access and the electrical work. It also means you cannot compare them on price without inviting two sales conversations, and that is the single biggest practical complaint about this category.
For context on the order of magnitude, dealer-installed permanent lighting runs into several thousand dollars on a typical home — the figure the whole DIY tier exists in reaction to. Run the comparison against the alternatives in DIY vs professional install cost and renting vs buying Christmas lights before you take either quote.
Looking for an EverLights alternative?
A large share of people searching for these two brands are really asking a third question: is there a version of this I can buy today without a quote? There is, and the honest answer is that the DIY kits below give you the same basic architecture — addressable per-pixel LEDs in a track under the eave, app-controlled, scheduled, running year-round — with two real differences.
- You are the installer. That means you own the mounting quality and anything that leaks. On a single-story house with a safe ladder line, that is a weekend. On a steep two-story, it is the reason dealers exist.
- The warranty is short. Govee publishes one year. Against a lifetime product warranty or five years on parts, that is the gap you are being paid to accept.
What you are not giving up is much on the hardware. Govee's 2 Pro publishes IP68 on the strand and a run the manufacturer states can be cut and reconnected to fit a complicated roofline; Lumary publishes a 2200K-6500K tunable white band, which is the closest DIY equivalent of EverLights' dedicated warm-white diode. The full set of picks and the criteria behind them are in the best permanent outdoor Christmas lights.
Choose EverLights if...
- You want the option to install it yourself, which Trimlight does not offer
- A dedicated true-warm-white diode is important to you and you want it stated in writing
- Five years on parts is long enough for your planning horizon
- You are comparing against DIY kits and want a professionally supported product in the same conversation
Choose Trimlight if...
- The warranty is the reason you are buying a dealer system at all
- You want a factory-trained installer and a local dealer to call
- Your eave line is high, steep, or over ground a ladder cannot be footed on
- A color-matched channel that hides every wire is the finish you are paying for
How we compared them
Every claim above is quoted from each company's own published material, with both sources linked below. We have not installed either system, we have no pricing from either company, and we have not tested the color rendering of either. Where a specification is not published, this page says it is not published rather than filling the gap. See methodology.
What to buy
The products that fit the advice above, chosen by the process on our methodology page. Every specification quoted is the manufacturer’s own published figure, linked on the page.
Quick picks
| # | Product | Best for | Score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Top pickGovee Permanent Outdoor Lights 2 Pro, 100 ft100 ft / 60 lights, cuttable, IP68 | A permanent track trimmed to a complicated roofline | 8.8 | $399.99 · View on Amazon |
| 2 |  Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max, 105 ft / 80 LED105 ft / 80 LED, RGBAICW, 2200K-6500K | Warm white you can actually tune | 8.7 | $322.99 · View on Amazon |
| 3 |  AMURTH 100 ft RGB+IC Permanent Outdoor Lights100 ft, RGB+IC, IP67 | Testing the idea before spending real money | 7.4 | $59.99 · View on Amazon |
#ad We may earn a commission · Price as of October 9, 2026
Scores are our own editorial judgment from published specifications and buyer feedback, scored against the same criteria across this category. See how we pick.
Jump to a full review below: lights
The picks in full
Top pick
Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights 2 Pro, 100 ft
Govee
The permanent-lighting model explicitly designed to be cut and reconnected, which is what lets it fit a roof with gables and returns instead of forcing the roof to fit the kit.
Permanent lighting and trimmable lighting overlap at exactly one point: a track you mount once has to match the roofline exactly, because you will be looking at it in July. Govee's Pro models are the ones specified for that. Govee describes the 2 Pro as designed to be cut, extended or reconnected to fit different eave lengths and complex rooflines, and sells it as 100 ft and 200 ft kits with a 200 ft total cap once extensions are added.
The model naming is the trap here and it is worth spelling out. Govee's permanent range contains models that are cuttable and models that are not — the Permanent Outdoor Lights 2 is listed as not supporting cutting, while the Pro models are. If trimming to length is the reason you are buying, the word Pro in the product name is doing load-bearing work.
The specification that separates this from an ordinary string is IP68 on the strand, with the Y connector also IP68 and the control box and power adapter at IP67. That is a fully sealed run with a slightly less sealed brain, which is the right way round: the strand sits on the fascia in the weather for years, and the control box can be sited somewhere sheltered.
What you should not expect is invisibility. A permanent track is a visible line under the eave in daylight on every system sold, and any listing photo implying otherwise was taken at night. Color-matched to the fascia it reads as trim, which is the honest best case.
The lengths, LED count, spacing, ingress ratings and the cut-and-reconnect capability above are Govee's published figures, linked in the sources below.
What works
- Cut-and-reconnect is a published capability, not a modification you improvise
- IP68 on the strand is the highest ingress rating in DIY permanent lighting
- One install covers Christmas, Halloween and year-round accent light
- Matter support means it is not locked to a single app forever
What does not
- Costs several seasons' worth of retail C9, and the warranty is short by permanent-lighting standards
- The 200 ft total cap is a real constraint on a large or multi-elevation house
- Non-Pro Govee permanent models do not support cutting — the model name matters
- It is a visible track under the eave in daylight, like every system of this type
| Lengths | 100 ft (H3A51) and 200 ft (H3A53) |
|---|---|
| LEDs | 60 lights on the 100 ft model, roughly 40 cm spacing |
| Ingress rating | IP68 strand and Y connector; IP67 control box and adapter |
| Cuttable | Yes — Govee states the run can be cut, extended and reconnected |
| Max total length | 200 ft (60 m) including extensions, per Govee |
| White range | 1000K-10000K, dual-layer color effect |
| Control | App, 100 preset scenes, Music Sync, Matter, Alexa, Google Assistant |
Warm white you can actually tune
Lumary Permanent Outdoor Lights Max, 105 ft / 80 LED
Lumary
The permanent system with a real tunable white band rather than one fixed white, mounted on a track base the strand slides out of. The two reasons to pick it over Govee are both about the eleven months that are not December.
The thing nobody tells you about permanent eave lighting is that the Christmas setting barely matters. You will use it for six weeks a year. The setting you will actually live with is whatever the house looks like on a Tuesday in April, and that is a white-light question, not a color one.
This is where Lumary's specification earns its place. The LED is an RGBAICW five-in-one node with a published tunable white band of 2200K to 6500K, which means the off-season setting can be a 2700K warm house light that reads as architectural lighting. Systems built on RGB plus a single fixed white diode give you one white and you either like it or you do not.
The second reason to look at this one is the mounting. Lumary builds the Max on a track base fixed with 3M adhesive plus nails and cable buckles, with the light strand sitting in the base rather than being the base. That is the detail that answers two separate real problems: an HOA that will not allow year-round fixtures, and a homeowner who wants the strand down for a repaint. The channel stays, the lights come out.
Ratings are IP67 on the lights and the adapter with an IP65 control box, and Lumary publishes an operating range of -4 F to 140 F. That is the right shape for this product class — the parts in the weather sealed hardest, the brain one step down and sited somewhere sheltered. Forty-four preset scenes, app control, voice assistants and a physical remote are all published features.
Two honest cautions. The app is 2.4 GHz only, which on a modern combined-band router means splitting the network or using a guest band for setup, and plenty of one-star reviews across this whole category are that problem rather than a hardware fault. And the adhesive-first mounting wants a clean, sound, dry fascia; on chalky old paint the mechanical fixings are not optional.
Lengths, LED count, the white range, the ingress ratings, the temperature range, the scene count and the mounting hardware above are Lumary's published figures, linked in the sources on the pages that use this pick.
What works
- A genuine 2200K-6500K white band, so the off-season setting can be a warm house light rather than a cold one
- The detachable track base means the strand can come off and the channel stays mounted
- IP67 on the lights and the adapter, with the control box one step down at IP65
- Per-node addressable color, so a long eave shows motion rather than flashing in unison
What does not
- 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi only — a 5 GHz-only network has to be split before setup
- The track is adhesive-first; a fascia that is dirty, chalky or freshly painted needs the mechanical fixings
- Lumary does not publish a warranty term as plainly as the dealer-installed brands do
- It is a visible line under the eave in daylight, same as every system of this type
| Length | 105 ft with 80 LEDs (158 ft / 120 LED version also sold) |
|---|---|
| LED | RGBAICW five-in-one per node, individually addressable |
| White range | 2200K-6500K tunable |
| Ingress rating | IP67 lights and adapter; IP65 control box |
| Operating range | -4 F to 140 F (manufacturer figure) |
| Scenes | 44 preset scene modes |
| Control | Lumary app (2.4 GHz Wi-Fi only), voice assistants, remote, control box |
| Mounting | 3M adhesive track base, nails and cable buckles supplied |
Testing the idea before spending real money
AMURTH 100 ft RGB+IC Permanent Outdoor Lights
AMURTH
The unbranded sixty-dollar tier of permanent eave lighting: the right ratings on the listing, app and remote control, and no manufacturer behind it to publish a warranty or still be selling the same kit next year.
There is a real argument for buying the cheap one first in this category, and it is not the price. It is that you do not yet know whether you will like looking at a light track under your eave for the next decade. A permanent system is a mounting decision as much as a purchase, and one season on an inexpensive run tells you something no review can.
Search Amazon for permanent outdoor lights and you will find a whole tier of these at roughly a quarter of what Govee and Lumary charge: 100 feet, RGB+IC addressable nodes, IP67 on the listing, app and remote control, scene modes and music sync. AMURTH's is one of several effectively identical kits. We are listing it because it is the one that was in stock at a verifiable price when we checked, not because the brand means anything.
That is the honest case against it, and it is worth stating plainly. There is no manufacturer website, no published specification sheet and no warranty term we could find. The Amazon listing is the entire documentation set. Next season the same kit will very likely be sold under a different five-letter brand name, which means replacement nodes, a matching extension run, or any support at all is a gamble rather than a plan.
What you are buying, concretely, is one season of finding out three things: whether your fascia takes the track cleanly, whether the controller location you chose actually works, and whether you like the look in daylight in July. Those three answers are worth money, and this is the cheapest way to buy them. If the answer is yes to all three, replacing it later with a system that publishes a warranty is a reasonable plan rather than a waste.
If the answer is no, you have learned it for the price of a decent set of C9s. That is the whole pitch, and we would rather make it that way than dress an unbranded kit up as a bargain version of a named one.
The length, LED type, ingress rating and control features above are the specification published on the live Amazon listing, which is linked in the sources. Where a figure is not on that listing, we have said so rather than filling it in.
What works
- A quarter or less of what the named systems cost, for the same basic architecture
- Addressable RGB+IC, so it is not a single-color strand pretending otherwise
- IP67 on the listing, which is the rating this product class needs
- Cheap enough to treat the first season as a trial of the idea itself
What does not
- No manufacturer site, no spec sheet, no published warranty — the listing is all there is
- No tunable white band published, so the eleven-month look is whatever white the RGB mix makes
- These listings rotate: the brand name on the identical kit changes season to season, so spares and support are a gamble
- Nothing to hold anyone to if a run fails in year two
| Length | 100 ft |
|---|---|
| LED | RGB+IC addressable |
| Ingress rating | IP67 (listing specification) |
| Control | App and 2.4 G remote |
| Modes | DIY and preset scene modes |
| Published warranty | None we could find |
| Manufacturer spec page | None — the Amazon listing is the only published specification |
Common questions
Is EverLights or Trimlight better?
They answer different questions. Trimlight publishes the longer warranty — a lifetime product warranty on core components — and sells only professional installation through its 300-plus dealers. EverLights publishes one year labor and five years parts, but also sells DIY ClickLights kits, so it is the only one of the two you can buy and install yourself. Pick on warranty or on install model, because neither publishes a price.
What is the warranty on EverLights?
EverLights publishes a 1 year labor and 5 year parts warranty, and states a 50,000 hour life expectancy for the lights. Dealer-installed systems are sold locally, so ask for the written terms with your quote and check whether the warranty transfers if you sell the house.
Is Trimlight DIY?
No. Trimlight states the system is professionally installed and explicitly not DIY, fitted by authorized, factory-trained technicians through over 300 authorized dealerships nationwide. If you want to install a permanent system yourself, EverLights' ClickLights kits or a DIY kit from Govee or Lumary are the routes available.
What is a good alternative to EverLights?
If the appeal was permanent app-controlled eave lighting rather than the installation service, the DIY kits are the alternative: Govee's Permanent Outdoor Lights 2 Pro publishes IP68 on the strand and a cuttable run, and Lumary's Max publishes a 2200K-6500K tunable white band. You own the install and the warranty is one year rather than five, which is the trade.
Are permanent holiday lights visible during the day?
Yes, on every system including these two. EverLights describes its design as invisible during the day and Trimlight describes its channel as barely noticeable; the second is the more accurate description of what the category achieves. A well-installed channel color-matched to the fascia reads as trim from the street, which is the honest best case.
How much does permanent Christmas lighting cost?
Neither EverLights nor Trimlight publishes pricing — both sell by quote, because cost depends on linear feet, elevations, access and electrical work. Dealer-installed permanent lighting runs into several thousand dollars on a typical home. DIY kits cost a fraction of that, which is the entire reason the DIY tier exists.
Sources
Every specification quoted on this page comes from the manufacturer’s own published information or a current retail listing, linked below. Where a figure is not published, we say so rather than estimating it.
- Trimlight — brand site: professionally installed not DIY, patented channel, lifetime product warranty on core components, 300+ dealerships, Trimlight Edge app
- EverLights — brand site: ClickLights, RGBW with true warm white, 70 lumens per light, 50,000 hour life, 1 year labor / 5 year parts warranty, DIY kits and professional install
- Trimlight — brand comparison of permanent Christmas lighting systems
- Govee — Permanent Outdoor Lights 2 Pro product page, for the DIY alternative's published specification