Blog · Burlington

Permanent or seasonal Christmas lights in Burlington: five winters compared

Over five Burlington winters, permanent lighting costs more up front and then saves ten roof visits, five seasons of storage and the January takedown, and it gets used all year. It suits the straight soffits of Millcroft, Headon Forest and Alton Village; older Roseland and Aldershot houses and condominium units are often better off seasonal.

Last updated October 28, 2026 · Reviewed by the Burlington Christmas Lights team

Is permanent lighting cheaper than seasonal lights over five years in Burlington?

It depends on how many seasons you would otherwise book, and the Burlington cost guide sets out where the two lines cross. The pattern is simple: permanent lighting is a larger single cost than one season of a hired install, and each following season narrows the gap, because the seasonal service is paid for again every fall while the permanent system is not. Households that have hired a seasonal install two or three years running are the ones for whom the comparison is most worth doing.

Money is only part of it. The table below is the rest.

How do the two compare over five winters?

Over five winters	Seasonal install	Permanent lighting
Visits to the roof	Ten: install each November, takedown each January	One install, plus an optional fall check
Storage between seasons	Labelled bins, yours or the installer's	None
When it is used	Late November to early January	Every evening of the year if you like
Colours	Fixed by the strings chosen	Any colour or scheme, from an app
Where it sits in winter	On the eavestrough lip and shingle edge	Under the soffit, sheltered by the overhang
Fastening	Clips only; nothing left in January	Screwed to fascia or soffit, by design
Condominium approval	Often granted for clip-on lights	A larger request, often to a board meeting

Which Burlington houses suit permanent lighting?

• Brick two-storeys from the 1970s to the 1990s. Brant Hills, Headon Forest, Orchard and Millcroft, with aluminum soffit, long front eaves and wide double garages. The eaves sit high enough that every seasonal install there is ladder work under Ontario's fall-protection rule for heights over 3 metres, which is exactly what permanent track removes.
• Newer houses and freehold towns above Dundas. Alton Village and the streets around it, with vinyl soffit and clean straight rooflines.
• Anyone tired of the ladder. Nothing to hang, take down or store, and a porch light, patio light and Canada Day display in the summer.

Seasonal is often the better answer on older Roseland and Aldershot houses with wood soffit, deep cornices, dormers and decorative trim, where track is fiddly to fit and a clipped outline looks better, and on condominium units, where the board decides whether anything can be fastened to a common element.

How do they handle lake wind and escarpment ice?

Burlington has no weather station with a full 1981 to 2010 climate record, so the nearest official figures are Environment Canada's normals for the Hamilton airport at Mount Hope, up on the escarpment. They average 9.1 days a year with freezing rain or drizzle, 1.6 of them in December and 2.8 in January, December lows near -5.8 °C and January lows near -9.3 °C, and about 34 cm of snow in December. The airport sits higher and farther from the lake than most of the city, so treat those as the escarpment's figures: closer to what Kilbride sees than the lakeshore.

Lakeshore houses have the other problem, which is wind off open water. A seasonal install there is set up for it, with tighter clip spacing, runs tied off at the corners and no loose loops, and service calls through the season cover anything a storm moves. Permanent track avoids most of both problems by sitting under the soffit edge, out of the ice that builds in eavestroughs and out of most of the wind's reach. It still deserves a look along the run each fall, before the first freezing rain.

What should I ask before buying permanent lighting?

1. Where exactly does the track go? Under the soffit edge or on the fascia face, how it turns corners, and how it crosses the garage.
2. Is it colour-matched? To your soffit or fascia, so it reads as trim by day.
3. How is it powered? Usually from an existing GFCI-protected exterior outlet. If a new outlet or circuit is needed, ESA requires hired electrical work to be done by a Licensed Electrical Contractor and reported to ESA, and it should be its own line on the quote.
4. What happens if the internet drops? The controller should keep its schedules.
5. What is covered, and for how long? Track, LEDs, power supply and labour, in writing.
6. How is a single failed node replaced? And how fast in December.
7. What happens when the eavestrough or roof is replaced? How the track comes off and goes back on.
8. Does a board need to approve it? For any condominium townhouse, yes, before anything else.

What does each cost to run on a Burlington Hydro bill?

Very little either way, if both are LED. Burlington Hydro delivers the power; the Ontario Energy Board sets the price. At the November 1, 2026 prices, a 100-watt LED display lit from 5 to 10 p.m. on a weekday uses half a kilowatt-hour: two hours at the 18.9¢ Time-of-Use on-peak price and three at the 9.1¢ off-peak price, about 6.5¢ in all. On the Ultra-Low Overnight plan, whose weekday on-peak window runs 4 to 9 p.m. at 37.7¢, the same evening is about 16.5¢. Weekends are 9.1¢ on both plans, about 4.6¢ a night. A permanent system adds a small saving here: it can run a dimmer warm white until 9 p.m. on weekdays and save the full scheme for later.

When is seasonal still the right choice?

When you expect to move within a few years, when the house is a heritage-style roofline that track would spoil, when a board says no to fasteners, or when the display is mostly trees and garden rather than roofline. A seasonal install with takedown and storage leaves nothing on the house in January. If you are unsure which suits your house, send photos of the front through the quote form and ask for both options; the quote will say plainly which fits, and the permanent lighting page covers the system in more detail.

Sources

• Environment and Climate Change Canada: Canadian Climate Normals 1981-2010
• Ontario Energy Board: Electricity rates
• Burlington Hydro: Who we are
• Electrical Safety Authority: Information for homeowners
• Ontario Regulation 213/91: Construction Projects