NANOLEAF

Say Goodbye To Your Ladder With Nanoleaf Permanent Outdoor Lights

It's almost time! Holiday lighting season is nearly here. With it comes the magic of turning several hours of frustration, sweat, bargaining with a higher power, and choice language into a lovely lighting display.

Or, you could put up Nanoleaf's Permanent Outdoor Lights and leave the shaky ladder and balls of tangled, half-lit string lights behind forever.

What Is It?...The Nanoleaf Permanent Outdoor Lights are the company's latest outdoor lighting product (they started last year with connected string lights and then unveiled accent lights earlier this year). They start at $199 (currently on sale) and come in 15, 45, or 90 meter strands(https://nanoleaf.me/en-US/products/essentials/outdoor/multicolor-permanent-outdoor-lights/?pack=smarter-kit&size=15). Each strand has addressable LED pucks that can be controlled via the Nanoleaf app, your smart home system of choice, or without an app via an in-line controller.

Get this without having to climb a ladder every year? Yes please. Anthony Karcz

Not surprisingly, given the name, the lights are meant to be permanently installed and have an IP67 and IP65 rating against water and dust. The lenses are UV resistant as well. Once you've installed them, you shouldn’t have to touch them again (though we'll see how they stand up to the Florida summer next year).

What's nice is that you can make the strands shorter or longer with some minor splicing. Each kit comes with what you need to make splices (as opposed to other permanent solutions where you have to provide your own hardware) and Nanoleaf makes 5m extension packs.

Weather and dust resistant pucks can take plenty of abuse. Nanoleaf

Is It Easy To Install?..."Easy" is a relative term here. Compared to most of Nanoleaf's other "stick on the wall and plug in" lighting solutions, it's fairly complex.

However, if you've ever installed a permanent accent lighting solution, you know that it can be an arduous task involving hours of measuring, drilling, testing, and splicing. If you can use an electric drill and screwdriver, you can install the Nanoleaf Permanent Outdoor Lights. And, honestly, you might not even need that (though it is recommended).

The hardest part of the process is untangling the strand of lights from the box and laying it out along the perimeter where you want to install it. Of course, if you have multiple gables or disconnected eaves that you want to light, figuring out your layout will take more work. For me, I have a one-story home with continuous eaves that make installation quite straightforward.

As far as actual installation goes, it's astonishingly simple when you have perforated metal eaves like mine. Nanoleaf includes a measuring tool so that you can consistently find where you want the light to be in relation to the edge of the roof. This was extremely helpful in keeping the installation straight. My only wish here was that the measuring tool be sturdier. After 30 (or 60 or 90!) pucks, the cardboard tool started to get a little floppy.

With the distance gauge in place, you peel the backing off the bracket and press it to where it needs to go. To make it permanent, you unclip the light from the bracket and drive a couple of small screws to hold it into place, then slide the light back on. Nanoleaf includes copious clips and channels to route your excess wire (or to help create a bend), plus extra screws (which is good because you will drop several to the ground below, never to find them again).

The only issue (and the only reason I'd get a professional to help me next time) is that I'm not a fan of heights over 10"...so climbing a tall ladder or leaning over the edge of the roof to install the lights on the highest peak of my roof was a challenge. Line of sight is very important when installing. Trying to get those highest light puck brackets screwed in by feel was not optimal.

If you have white eaves, you're good to go. Nanoleaf

How Does It Look?...Nanoleaf's Permanent Outdoor Lights are clean and professional looking. But there's no real way to hide them. Unlike other permanent accent light solutions, where they're integrated into gutters or hidden in eaves, Nanoleaf's solution is clearly visible.

Which is why I wish it came in a color other than white. Luckily I don't have a fussy HOA but even I sometimes am taken aback by the white cord and light pucks on the brown eaves of my house.

That said, I'm not overly interested in how they look when the sun is up and the lights are turned off. I'm more interested in how these perform when it gets dark. Can they actually replace my holiday light display? Most certainly.

You have 16 million colors to choose from for each light and can create a whole host of light scenes. You can even make the display react to music (which can be a lot of fun). There are several built-in scenes that you can run through with the in-line controller (or cycle through in the app) but there are even more scenes to download in the app from the Nanoleaf community.

What's even better is that you can sync the patterns in the Nanoleaf app to your other devices. If you have a couple of Essentials bulbs by the front door and Nanoleaf’s smart string lights adorning your garden, you can have them all use the same scene!

I appreciate not being limited to a single holiday for a strand of lights. Want to make a special display for your birthday? Go for it! You're limited only by your imagination. Can't think of anything? Enter a phrase in the Nanoleaf app and its AI tool will create a scene for you.

The lights provide nice, even lighting and are wonderful accent lights when you're not using them as holiday lights as well.

They also do no-colored lighting very well. Nanoleaf

Where Can I Get It?...The easiest place to find the Permanent Outdoor Lights is on the Nanoleaf site. Even better, they've already started their Black Friday savings, so you can get them for less right now, install them this week, then be ready to flip on the holiday display after Thanksgiving (and not a second sooner).

I've been impressed by the durability of Nanoleaf's other outdoor products (mine have survived the summer heat and two hurricanes), so I expect these to last for a long time. And given how versatile they are, I see no reason to ever take them down. See ya later, ladder.

https://nanoleaf.me

Anthony Karcz