Plain English

Lighting glossary

Name: Celebration Lighting
Address: Twin Falls, ID, US
Telephone: (208) 242-4252

The words that come up when someone quotes you for permanent lighting. You should not have to already know these to get a straight answer.

Addressable LED: An LED that can be controlled individually rather than only as part of a whole string. This is what allows one run of lights to show several colours at once, or to animate.
Colour temperature: How warm or cool a white light appears, measured in kelvin. Lower numbers look warmer and more yellow; higher numbers look cooler and bluer. Most homes prefer a warm white for everyday use.
Controller: The unit that drives the LED runs and stores your scenes and schedules. Your phone talks to the controller rather than to the lights directly, which is why schedules keep running if your connection drops.
Dormer: A window structure projecting from a sloping roof. Dormers add cuts and fixings to a lighting run and are one reason two similarly sized homes can quote differently.
Eave: The part of a roof that overhangs the wall. On most homes this is where a permanent lighting track is fitted, because it hides the hardware while giving the light a clean line to follow.
Fascia: The vertical board running along the edge of the roof, usually where guttering is fixed. Permanent lighting track is normally colour-matched to it so the channel disappears against the house in daylight.
Gable: The triangular section of wall where two roof slopes meet. Gables add corners and changes of direction to a run, which is one of the things that makes a roofline more complex to light.
IP rating: A two-digit rating for how well an enclosure resists solids and water. It matters for permanent outdoor lighting because the hardware stays on the building through every season.
Linear foot: A foot measured along a single line — here, along the roofline being lit. Permanent lighting is usually estimated per linear foot because the roofline perimeter, not the floor area, is what drives the work.
Low voltage: A circuit running at a much lower voltage than household mains. Permanent lighting runs are typically low voltage, which is part of why they are practical to install as a dedicated system.
Lumen: A measure of total visible light output. More lumens means brighter; for architectural lighting the aim is usually a controlled, even line rather than maximum brightness.
Permanent lighting: An LED system installed once and left in place year round, colour-matched to disappear in daylight, as distinct from seasonal string lights that go up and come down each year.
RGBW: Red, green, blue and a dedicated white diode in each LED. The separate white is why a good system can produce a genuinely warm white rather than an approximation mixed from colours.
Roofline: The outline a roof makes against the sky. Lighting it is what produces the effect people recognise as permanent architectural lighting.
Scene: A saved lighting setup — a set of colours, a pattern and a brightness — that you can recall in one tap instead of rebuilding it each time.
Soffit: The underside of an eave overhang. Some lighting layouts mount into the soffit rather than the fascia, which changes the direction the light throws.
Track (or channel): The slim housing, usually aluminium, that holds the LEDs and is mounted to the building. It is the part that stays visible in daylight, which is why colour-matching it matters.
Zone: A section of the system that can be controlled separately from the rest, so you could light the front of a building differently from the side.

Something here still unclear? Call (208) 242-4252and ask — we would rather explain it than have you nod along.