What to Ask Before Hiring an Outdoor Lighting Installer

Take these to every company you talk to, ours included. You are not trying to catch anyone out. You are trying to find out how fast and how plainly each answer comes back, because a company that has thought about your house answers in sentences, not slogans.

Somebody is going to be on a ladder against your fascia, working over your landscaping and your driveway. Ask for general liability coverage and, if the company has employees, workers' compensation. Then ask for the certificate to come from the agent or carrier rather than as a photo on a phone, and read two things on it: your name or your address in the certificate holder box, and the expiration date.

A screenshot of a policy that lapsed in the spring is a common thing to hand over and an easy thing to miss. If a company hesitates at “have your agent email it to me,” you have learned something before any money changed hands.

Some companies install with their own employees. Some use subcontracted crews. Some sell in one city and staff from another. None of those is automatically wrong, so ask rather than assume, and ask it as a plain question: who is on my roof on install day, and do they work for you?

The follow-up matters more than the answer. If something needs adjusting next spring, does the same crew come back, or is that a different arrangement by then? Whoever mounted your track knows where every run, corner and dormer went. That knowledge is worth a lot two years later, and it stays with the company only if the people do.

This is the single question that separates systems that look good eleven months a year from systems you only turn on in December. RGBW means the fixture carries a dedicated true-white diode alongside the red, green and blue, so warm white is actually white. RGB-only systems fake white by mixing colors, and the result reads blue or pink along a roofline — fine for Halloween, wrong for the everyday warm white most owners end up running.

The daylight half of the question gets asked less and matters just as much. Permanent lighting is hardware on the front of your house at two in the afternoon, not just at eight at night.

Ask how far apart the LEDs sit in the track. Spacing is what decides whether your roofline reads as a clean line of light or as a row of dots with dark gaps between them, and it is the detail most likely to be different between two quotes that look identical on paper.

Ask what the LEDs are rated for in hours. Ours are commercial-grade and rated to 50,000 hours, which is the number to compare against. Then ask how the fixtures are sealed and how the track fastens to the house. On the coast that is a salt-air and hurricane-season question; inland it is a pollen, thunderstorm and ice question. Either way, a system assembled from seasonal parts and a system specified for year-round outdoor use age very differently, and you will find that out in year three, not week one.

While you are on hardware, ask where the controller and power supply end up and whether you will be looking at them. How the whole system goes together is worth reading before anyone quotes you.

Warranty is where spoken language and written language drift apart. Ask for the document before you sign, not after, and then ask one question in exactly these words: does this cover the product, the labor, or both?

A product warranty covers the hardware — if a component fails, the part is covered. Labor is a separate thing: someone has to come out, get on a ladder and swap it. Plenty of good warranties cover product only. That is not a problem as long as you knew it when you bought, which is the whole point of asking.

Ours, stated precisely: the lighting hardware carries a 15-year product warranty. That is a product warranty on the hardware, so ask us how service works at your quote and you will know exactly what to expect before you spend anything. Also worth asking anyone: what has to happen for the warranty to stay valid, and what voids it.

You are buying software as much as hardware, so ask whose account the system lives in. Is it set up in your name on your phone, or in the installer's account with you as a guest? Ask what happens to your access if that company sells, moves, or closes — and ask it kindly, because it is a fair question and any settled company has an answer.

Ask the resilience question too: if the internet goes out, do the lights still come on? With our system the controller runs the schedules locally at the house, so an outage takes away remote control from the couch, not your dusk-to-dawn lighting. We set the app up on your phone at handoff and walk you through it before we leave, and you can schedule up to a year ahead. Ask any installer to show you that walkthrough step in their process.

Attention during the sale tells you very little about year two. Ask what the second year looks like: what number do I call, who picks up, and what hours? Ask whether it is a local line or a national queue, and whether the person who answers can see your job.

We answer calls and texts at (910) 910-4569 from 8am to 10pm, every day. One number, one company, both markets.

A brochure roofline is not your roofline. Ask any installer to come to the house, walk the fascia, and show you the lights on your actual elevation at night. That visit is where the real information lives: which runs are straightforward, what happens at your dormers and gables, whether a stretch of fascia is soft, whether there is an outdoor outlet where the system needs one.

It also tells you how the company sells. You should leave the demo with a written quote for that exact house and no pressure attached to it. Ours is free, and there is no obligation on the other side of it — book a free quote and on-home demo whenever you are ready to compare us against everyone else on this list.

If you are in an HOA neighborhood, ask whether the company will help with the architectural review submission or hand you a form and wish you luck. A submission usually wants product specifications, the mounting method and the track color, and a permanent color-matched track is a very different thing to review than a strand of bulbs. We walk you through the acknowledgment and the details a board asks for; the HOA approval guide covers what goes in the packet and the objections boards actually raise.

Then ask whether they also install classic seasonal lights. We do both, which is why we will tell you when a seasonal Christmas light installation is the better fit — a short stay, a simple roofline, a house you are listing. If you want the comparison run out over the years you will own the home, read seasonal versus permanent.

Ask any company you are seriously considering whether you can speak to a past customer, and ask that customer two specific questions rather than a general one: did anything need fixing after install, and how fast did they come back? Reviews tell you about the sale. A phone call tells you about the follow-up.

Insurance, the crew, RGBW, spacing and hour rating, the warranty in writing, the app account, service in year two, a demo on your own house, HOA help, references. Ten topics, thirteen questions, and every one of them is answerable in a sentence by a company that installs this for a living.

Vague answers are the signal. Not because everyone who is vague is dishonest, but because permanent lighting stays on your house for a very long time, and you want the company that has already thought about the parts you have not. If you want to compare systems on the hardware itself rather than the sales process, the buyer's guide works through the same decisions from the product side. Questions on any of it — call or text (910) 910-4569, or read the permanent outdoor lighting FAQ.