Permanent holiday lighting: Christmas, Halloween, Easter and everything between

Christmas

Classic choices: warm white, red and white candy cane, red and green alternating, or a slow twinkle in warm white. C9 Track gives the traditional bulb shape; pebbles give a cleaner point of light. Most families run warm white through the season and color on the weekends.

Scene tip: a chase pattern reads well from the street on long straight eaves and badly on gables. We set a static or slow-fade pattern on cut-up rooflines.

Halloween

Orange and purple alternating is the standard. Add a slow flicker in the last week of October and a green accent on the garage. Halloween is also when a wrapped front-yard tree does its best work, because the tree carries the color the roofline can't.

The rest of the calendar

Valentine's in red and pink, St. Patrick's in green, Easter in pastels, Memorial Day and the Fourth in red, white and blue, and school colors for graduation. Each is a two-minute scene to save. Owners who never planned to use them usually end up running six or eight a year.

What it costs versus seasonal

Seasonal single-color C9 service is $11 per foot in year one and $6 to $7 per foot to re-hang each year after. Permanent Pebble Track is $32 per foot once. On a 150-foot roofline the seasonal service passes the permanent price in year five, and the permanent system is lit every night, not 45 of them.