Permanent Outdoor Lighting in Portsmouth and the NH Seacoast

Salt air is the whole problem, so it is the whole spec

Ask anyone who has owned a home in Rye, New Castle, or along Portsmouth's waterfront what happens to exterior hardware. Fasteners rust. Aluminum pits. Plastic goes brittle in the wind and the sun. Holiday strands with a plastic clip every few feet do not last a season on an exposed elevation, and the connections corrode before they fail electrically. Inland lighting shipped to the coast does not survive.

• Marine-grade fastening on every mount, chosen for the trim material and the exposure
• Sealed, individually addressable LED nodes inside a finished aluminum channel, with no exposed strand for salt spray to reach
• Weather-sealed power and data connections at every junction, because coastal rain comes sideways
• A fixed channel, not a hanging strand, so there is nothing for a northeast wind off the water to lift
• Color-matched channel that reads as a trim line against clapboard, shingle, and brick in daylight

Attachment that respects a historic house

Portsmouth's South End, the streets around Strawbery Banke, and the older homes in New Castle and Exeter have original clapboard, trim, and cornices that have been maintained for two centuries. We do not treat that casually. The channel mounts to the fascia or the underside of the cornice, never to the roofing and never through the clapboard. Fastening is minimal, reversible, and matched to the wood. On brick, we avoid the masonry entirely and work from the trim. The channel is color-matched so it reads as part of the cornice, and if the system ever comes off, the house is as we found it.

The same no-holes rule applies to our seasonal holiday lighting, which is clip-mounted and never stapled or nailed. Many Seacoast homes run a permanent roofline and add seasonal garland, wreaths, and window candles in December. We install both and design them together.

How the system works

Permanent lighting is a slim aluminum channel mounted along the roofline, cornice, or fascia, with individually addressable LED nodes inside. In daylight it is a trim line. At night each node can be any color and brightness, in any pattern, controlled from an app on your phone. Most Portsmouth clients run a dimmable warm white as the everyday look, which suits the architecture and the neighborhood, with holiday scenes saved for December and schedules set to local sunset.

Every install starts with a walkthrough. We measure the rooflines, gables, dormers, and entry, talk through what the house should do on a normal evening versus a holiday, and decide which lines to light and which to leave dark. On a Federal or Georgian facade, a single clean run along the cornice often does more than outlining every edge. From there we cut the channel runs to length, set node spacing for even light, and program your first scenes before we leave.

Route-week honesty for the Seacoast

Portsmouth is about forty minutes from our Hampstead base, and Rye, Hampton, Exeter, and Stratham are a little closer. The Seacoast is on our route regularly through the season, and a permanent install can be scheduled in any season with a dry roof, which means it does not have to compete with the holiday route for a November week. Spring and summer installs are common here for exactly that reason. If you are reading this in the fall and want it lit for the holidays, call us and we will tell you honestly whether the calendar can hold it. If not, we can put up a seasonal display this year and move you to permanent in the spring.

What is included

• An on-site walkthrough covering the street elevation and any water-facing elevation
• Channel runs cut and matched to your rooflines, cornices, gables, dormers, and entry
• Marine-grade mounting and sealed, addressable LED nodes with app control and sunset scheduling
• Power placement planned around your existing exterior circuits
• Scene programming and an app walkthrough before the crew leaves
• Support from a crew based in southern New Hampshire, not a call center

Because the system is on every evening, it also does the quiet work: a lit facade on a dark January street, a house that looks occupied when you are away, and no extension cord across the front walk.

Permanent versus seasonal on the coast

Not every Seacoast home needs a permanent system. If you want a traditional display with garland, wreaths, and candles, and you are happy to have us hang and remove it each year, our seasonal service does that, with coastal-rated strands and tightened clip spacing on the water side. Permanent makes the most sense when the exposure is hard enough that a hanging strand is a losing battle, when you want the facade lit every evening, or when the house is old enough that you would rather have one careful install than an annual one. The walkthrough is where we figure out which fits, and plenty of Portsmouth homes end up with a permanent roofline and seasonal accents layered on.

Where we install on the Seacoast

Downtown Portsmouth · Market Square · The South End · New Castle · Rye · North Hampton · Hampton · Exeter · Stratham · Greenland · Dover · Durham · plus the rest of the New Hampshire Seacoast within reach of our Hampstead base

The Portsmouth and Seacoast service-area page covers everything we do here year-round, and the permanent lighting page covers the system in detail.

Talk to us about your Seacoast home

Portsmouth is about forty minutes from our Hampstead base and on the route regularly. Send us the address and we will walk the house with you. Call 603-691-1652 or use the contact form and we will follow up with next steps.