Updated September 2026. This post replaces our original 2013 primer with how we recommend outlining a house today.
When you're planning a Christmas display, it's easy to focus on everything going in the yard.
But the biggest prop is already there: your house.
A yard full of props can already make a great show. Outline the house behind them, and now the house becomes part of the sequence too. It frames everything you've built in front of it and gives you a much bigger canvas to work with.
Here's one from a HolidayCoro customer:
Landry Lights, Hudson, NH. This is a great example of why the house itself can become such a big part of the display.
And when you're putting that many pixels across a house, how you mount them starts to matter.
Why use a mounting system?
You can absolutely hang pixels individually. But across an entire house, you're now dealing with a lot of individual pixels, clips, alignment, and visible black wire.
A mounting system turns that outline into sections you can build once and work with as a unit.
1. Keep the spacing, and the look, consistent.
Instead of positioning and angling every pixel individually on the house, the mounting keeps them at the spacing and orientation you set. You can commit to the look you want, with pixels facing outward for a clean, defined outline or oriented toward the house for a wall-wash effect, without ending up with a mix of both along the same run.
2. Deal with a lot fewer individual clips.
A whole section can snap into a few clips instead of attaching pixels one at a time across the house.
3. Keep the installation cleaner-looking.
Pixel Pipe (seasonal) and PixaTrack (permanent) keep the pixels and wiring organized instead of leaving loose black pixel wire running along the house. That makes the installation less noticeable when the lights are off, too.
4. Bring repairs down to the garage.
With connectors between sections, you can unplug a section, bring it down, make the repair, and put it right back where it was. Your spacing stays intact.
5. Make the next installation easier.
With a seasonal installation, the sections can come down and go back up without starting over on pixel spacing and alignment, or moving the ladder for every individual pixel.
You can also build and test Pixel Pipe and PixaTrack sections on the ground before they go on the house.
A few more customer installs
Casey's 2025 display, before and after. Notice what happens when the house joins the display. The roofline gives the whole show a frame and connects the props in the yard to the house behind them.
Vineyards Lights, Meridian, ID. Look at how much of this display comes from the house outline itself. The rooflines, peaks, garage, and other architectural details all become usable parts of the show.
Thinking about what this could look like on your house?
The first choice is pretty simple.
Want it to come down after Christmas? Go with Pixel Pipe.
Pixel Pipe is built for seasonal installations. The clear, UV-resistant clips can stay on the house year-round, so your completed sections are ready to go back up the next season.
Pixel Pipe can also rotate in its clips, letting you dial in the direction the pixels face toward your viewing area.
Get Seasonal Mounting: Pixel Pipe
Want it to stay up? Go with PixaTrack.
PixaTrack is designed for permanent installations. It fully encloses the wiring, keeping it away from squirrels and other animals while protecting it from UV damage.
The wiring stays out of sight, and PixaTrack is available in off-white or brown to help it blend with the house, which can also help with HOAs.
It's available in front-facing and side/down-facing versions depending on how you want the pixels positioned.
Get Permanent Mounting: PixaTrack
Not sure exactly what you'll need? We'll help you figure it out.
You don't have to work out every part of the system yourself. Fill out our project design form and we'll send you instructions for sending us one photo of your house and your measurements.
We'll look at what you're planning and put together a recommendation and a complete quote with the controller, mounting, hardware, and accessories you'll need for your project.
Want to see the mounting on your house before deciding?
We offer Pixel Pipe and PixaTrack samples so you can see the mounting in person, compare the colors against your house, and get a feel for how it will look before choosing a system.
Still working through the design?
Our house outline video walks through the planning process from start to finish:
Want to run the numbers yourself? Our detailed house outline design guide walks through measuring, pixel counts, power, and controller placement step by step.
HolidayCoro.com
Very informative, thank you!
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sold on wanting to do Smart strip outlines on the house this year as opposed to the clusters of 4 single colored strings I did last year. I'll keep all your pointers in mind!
If you want control the whole roof line as one RGB channel can you set all the individual controllers to the same channel.
ReplyDeleteThanks David! I will be outling my house with the basic RGB strips. My plan is to permanently mount the strips, wiring, and controllers so I can use different sequences for different holidays year-round. I do have a couple of questions on the wiring. As you mentioned, the DMX controllers need to be daisy chained for signal purposes. However, if you try to also daisy chain the power, depending on the size of the display, you quickly run into the need for expensive large guage wire. Do you have any suggestions? My thinking is to use a single cat5 daisy chained for the signal and then run individual cat5 runs from a central power supply to each LED strip for power. I really don't want to get into running expensive and hard to conceal 6 or 8 guage power cable and I most certainly don't want to run 110vac for decentralized power supplies. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Dean
I'd use caution when mounting these lights for year round use. A number of years ago I did a fair amount of testing with different RGB lighting solutions (strip, modules, nodes, etc) and I found that some held up well over a six month period and others didn't fair so well - infact, some strips turned nearly completely brown from the UV exposure. So, make sure that all the items used are designs and will handle the harsh conditions that they will experience with year round exposure.
DeleteI can't provide specific advice on your display as for the power but "expensive large gauge wire" isn't really that expensive. What would likely be expensive is UV resistant wiring in the correct gauge. I would see our blog post here: http://blog.holidaycoro.com/2013/03/a-technical-guide-to-rgb-wire-selection.html about how to select the correct wire. If using CAT5, make 100% sure it is rated for outdoor, UV exposure. I really doubt that you'll need 6 or 8 AWG wire and don't rule out running 110v AC, there is a reason that Tesla's AC system won out over Edisons DC system of power distribution.
Agree with the AC comment. I have a single-story house with a long frontage, many gables, etc. I've placed 7 runs of dumb 5050 strip on the gables and have connected the ends of each run to a central (middle of house) CMD24-channel RGB controller. That controller has two power inputs, each for a 4-run grouping. That's working out just fine but I am thinking that I will have to go up into the attic and strategically place controllers and power supplies near the soffits and drill through so as to access them from the exterior. I say this because I want to replace the strip with 2801 or 2811 pixels so that I can do more lighting effects with the additional control. Does this make sense? What kinds of controllers and power supplies would you recommend?
ReplyDeleteNormally instead of directly placing the power supply at each of those locations where you need power, you would power from a more central location or locations and then run, say 18 AWG or 20 AWG wire along with the strip/modules to carry the power to the end or center and re-inject power there.
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