Frequently asked questions about permanent LED lighting in Montréal

We are based in LaSalle and install across Greater Montréal: the island of Montréal, Laval, Longueuil, Brossard, Saint-Lambert, Blainville, and both the North and South Shores. If you are not sure whether you are inside the radius, call us at (450) 999-7258 — the answer takes thirty seconds.

One of us comes to your property, measures what needs lighting and photographs it — free, no obligation, about forty minutes. Before anything is ordered, we show you a rendering of your own house lit, not a catalogue. That is where coverage, finish and the first scenes get decided. Only once you approve the design do we schedule the install.

Yes. 0% financing is available through Financeit on qualifying projects. We'll walk you through it at your free on-site estimate.

It is priced by the project, never by the hour. Most homes land in one of three ranges: a standard project runs about $3,000 to $5,000, a mid-range project starts around $15,000, and a complete project runs $30,000 to $50,000 and up. The exact number comes from the free on-site estimate, once the house is measured and you have approved the design.

Physically, nothing — it is the same system. Exterior lighting is about the facade in warm white, every night of the year. Holiday lighting is about colour, holiday scenes, and never installing seasonal lights again. Book either service and you get both: one system, one install, one invoice.

A run of individually addressable RGBW LEDs — pixels — set into an aluminum rail along the roofline, soffits and peaks. Because every pixel takes its own colour, the same run can reproduce the look of traditional pot lights in warm white, outline the architecture, or play gradients and animated full-colour scenes for a holiday or a game night. It is the part of the system that makes colour scenes possible.

A sealed aluminum bar that reads as one continuous line of light with no visible dots. Light bars run from warm white to cool white and dim from 1 to 100% per zone without flicker. Outside they wash rooflines, soffits, columns and full facades — mounted horizontally or vertically. Inside they sit under cabinets, under an island, under each stair nosing and inside a ceiling cove. Many facades use light bars only; others combine them with pixels.

Chip-on-board — a way of building an LED strip where many tiny chips sit on one continuous board under a single lens, so the light has no visible dots. That is what our light bars use, and it is why a run reads as one clean line along a soffit rather than a row of points. Pixel rails are the opposite by design: separate, individually addressable points, so each one can take its own colour.

A light source hidden in a recess — a ceiling coffer, a dropped bulkhead, the top of a cabinet — so you see only the light it throws, never the fixture. In a living room the light bounces off the ceiling and the room reads taller; in a bedroom a cove around the perimeter gives soft, even light with nothing to look at. It is the most requested interior effect.

Four kinds, all low-voltage and sealed for winter: uplights at the base of mature trees; low, staggered path points that suggest the route without lining it like a runway; strips under step nosings and along the tops of walls, so you see where your foot lands; and a line under the pool coping that lights the water from its rim. Cable is buried along existing edges and every fixture is aimed after dark.

Yes. RBQ licence 5864-7108-01, and commercial liability insurance that covers all of our installation work for the full duration of a job. The insurance clause is written into the service agreement you sign.

Yes, and you should. After the on-site visit we build a rendering of your own house with the lighting on it — the real roofline, the real columns, the scenes you asked about. Nothing is ordered until you have seen it and approved it. If you want to change the coverage or the finish, that is the moment.

Yes — restaurants, hotels, retail and multi-site brands. Commercial projects run on a heavier-duty system and are quoted on their own terms. Pick Commercial on the estimate form and we take it from there.

A deposit confirms your date: 30% for a residential project, 50% for a commercial one. The balance is due when the installation is finished. We send an invoice and everything is signed online; you can pay by credit card, e-transfer, cheque or cash — whatever works for you.

It depends on the season. Outside peak periods it can be a few weeks; at peak demand it can stretch to a few months. Ask us where the calendar stands when you book — and we keep growing the team to shorten the wait.

Crews work Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. We do not install on weekends.

Yes. Under the Quebec Consumer Protection Act you have ten days after signing to cancel in writing, with no fees, and any deposit is refunded in full within fifteen business days. Write to contact@visionbleu.com.

No. That is the point of a permanent system: no bulbs to change, no strings to take down, nothing to clean or re-seal. It stays on the house and you run it from the app.

After an outage the system reboots on its own when power returns. If it does not, unplug the control box, wait a moment and plug it back in. If you change your Wi-Fi network or password, reconnecting takes a few taps — there is a short step-by-step video on our YouTube channel.

No, and that is probably the biggest misunderstanding about this product. The system is permanent: it stays on the house year-round and you choose the scene. December in red and green, Halloween in orange, Valentine’s in pink, St. Patrick’s in green, Saint-Jean in blue and white, a birthday in somebody’s colours. Between holidays, most of our clients leave it in warm white — which simply makes it architectural facade lighting.

Barely. The aluminum rail sits tight against the soffit, the trim or the roof edge, and it comes in more than 120 finishes — we pick the one closest to your siding. The wiring runs inside, so there is no exposed wire, no staples and no hooks. From the street in daylight, most people notice nothing.

Yes, that is the whole point. Everything happens in the app on your phone: colour, brightness, zones and schedule. You can repaint the house orange on the morning of October 31 and put it back to warm white that same evening. There is no service call to book and no charge for changing a scene.

Both. Every pixel is addressed on its own, which allows static colours, alternating colours along a roof peak, gradients and moving animations. In practice most clients keep a static scene through the week and save the animations for the evening, because a calm facade holds attention longer than one that flashes.

No. That is the reason the product exists. We go up once, on install day. After that there is nothing to put up in the fall, nothing to take down in January, nothing to store in the garage, and nothing to replace because a section burned out. If a component does fail inside the warranty period, we come back — you do not.

Standard installations take one to three days. Larger properties, three-storey homes, and projects combining the facade with landscape and interior lighting can take over five. We confirm the exact duration after the visit, once the roofline has been measured — and you do not need to be home for all of it.

No. The rail is fixed under the roof overhang, into the soffit or the trim — not through the shingles. Wiring runs inside cavities that already exist. Our installers work every day on Québec homes in stone, brick, fibre cement and engineered wood, and the fastening method is matched to the material.

Very little. These are LEDs, and the residential controller is capped at 450 W — that is the absolute ceiling for the entire system at full brightness with every zone on, which essentially never happens. A warm white scene at medium brightness draws a fraction of it. For scale, that ceiling is in the range of a few household bulbs, for an entire facade.

Both, and it is the most common question. The line under the roof overhang is facade lighting: it washes the wall downward and makes the house readable from the street. At the same time, a lit facade is an occupied facade — which is why many of our clients keep it low all night rather than switching everything off.

No, because the light is aimed downward and the source is hidden under the overhang. From the street you do not see the LED, you see the lit wall. That is exactly what separates this from a ground-mounted floodlight aimed upward, which lights the sky and the neighbour’s windows as much as your facade.

It is closer to a reason to do it. Newer builds often combine stone, brick, fibre cement and engineered wood on the same wall, and in daylight the seam between materials is the first thing you see. By choosing what to light and at what intensity, we rebalance the facade after dark. Plenty of clients find their house reads as more unified at night than by day.

As early as you can, ideally before the soffits are closed — the wiring then runs inside with no rework at all. That said, the large majority of our installs are on finished houses, and the result is the same: the rail mounts under the existing overhang and the wiring follows cavities that are already there.

Yes, any time. It is the same system as our holiday lighting: every pixel takes its own colour. Most of our exterior-lighting clients keep warm white year-round and switch to red and green in December, or to team colours on a game night. Nothing to add, nothing extra to pay.

No, in the large majority of cases. On a kitchen that is already installed, the channel mounts under the upper cabinet and under the island overhang — we work from underneath. Wiring follows cavities and service voids that already exist. Occasionally a panel has to come off and go back on, but you hear that at the visit, not on install day.

You do not have to decide permanently. The same channel covers the range from warm to cool and is set per zone. In practice a kitchen gets worked in a crisper light and finished in a warm one at night; living rooms and bedrooms stay warm all the time. We set all of it together at the end of the install.

It complements them more often than it replaces them. A recessed fixture lights a surface; integrated lighting lights a use — the counter, the tread, the underside of the cabinet. Many of our clients end up using the ceiling lights only for cleaning, because the rest of the time the integrated light is enough and is nicer to be in.

No. That is precisely why we do not fit cheap LED tape. Our bars dim from 1 to 100% with no visible flicker, which matters most in a room where you watch television or take photographs — flicker that the eye misses often shows up on camera.

Yes, and it is the main reason to do it. The strip sits under the nosing, so the source is hidden from anyone climbing: you see the lit tread, not the light. Turned very low, that is enough to come downstairs at night without switching on the hall fixture.

From the app, by zone: level, white temperature, schedule. We can also keep your existing wall switches for everyday use, so nobody in the house needs a phone to turn the kitchen on.

No, and the distinction matters. Outside runs on light bars or an addressable pixel rail depending on the project, both sealed to IP68 and built for the cold. Inside always uses light bars, chosen for the quality of the white light and for fine dimming.

Yes, and it is usually the sensible order. One visit, one plan, one crew on site and one invoice. If the facade and the kitchen are both happening this year, doing them together saves paying to mobilise twice.

Yes. Older homes often have deep mouldings and high ceilings, which suit cove lighting particularly well. The constraint is usually the wiring route: in old plaster we plan the path at the visit rather than discovering it partway through.

A standard installation takes one to three days — a kitchen generally a day, a staircase half a day. A full project — kitchen, stairs, living room, primary bedroom — can take over five. We give you the exact duration after the visit.

Not if it is aimed properly — and aiming happens after dark, not on a drawing. Fixtures are pointed at what they light (a trunk, a wall, a hedge) rather than at the sky or the property line. That is exactly why we come back one evening to set every head instead of aiming everything in daylight.

No. We work with what is already there: trees, beds, paths, walls, deck. Low-voltage cable is buried shallow along existing edges, and the lawn closes over within a few weeks. If you are planning a redesign, tell us — running the cable beforehand is simpler.

Yes, and plenty of our clients do exactly that. People often start with the trees and the path, then add the pool, the spa or the back of the lot the following year. The system is built to be extended — we size the transformer for that from the start, specifically so it does not have to be replaced.

The fixtures are sealed to IP68 and rated to −40°C, so cold and meltwater are not the issue. The real risk is mechanical: a blower or a shovel catching a fixture at the edge of a path. We account for that when placing heads, setting them back from the areas you clear.

Yes, though we advise against it as a permanent setting. Colour works well for an evening or a party; the rest of the year, warm white flatters planting while coloured light flattens it. Most of our clients keep white and use colour occasionally.

Fewer than people expect. A typical Montréal suburban yard comes alive with about a dozen well-chosen points: two or three trees, the path, a wall, the deck. Adding fixtures everywhere does not make a yard more beautiful — it removes the shadows, and the shadows are what create the depth.

We light the surround, not the inside of the basin: a strip under the stone edge of the pool or the wall cap, lighting the water from its rim. The effect is softer than a submerged floodlight and requires no work inside the pool structure. Underwater lighting itself stays with your pool contractor.

Same control and same app, different fixtures. The facade uses light bars or an addressable pixel rail depending on the project; the grounds use dedicated landscape fixtures. They run together, by zone, from the same interface.

Comfortably — but that is not the objective. Lighting designed purely for safety gives you a flat, even property that reads like a parking lot. We light first so the yard is good to look at from inside the house; being easy to walk through follows from that.

12 years on controllers and pixels, 3 years on light bars and landscape fixtures. Labour is covered separately, for three years from installation — inside that window, a service call to replace a covered part costs nothing. After three years the part is still covered on its own schedule, but the visit is billed at our hourly service rate in effect at that time. LEDs are rated for more than 50,000 hours of service life.

For three years from installation, yes — a service call to replace a covered part costs nothing. After three years the part is still covered on its normal schedule (up to twelve years for controllers and pixels, three years for light bars and landscape fixtures), but the visit itself is billed at our hourly service rate in effect at that time.

Yes, that is what it is designed for. Components are sealed to IP68 — watertight against immersion, not merely splashing — and rated to operate down to −40°C. Packed snow, freezing rain and freeze-thaw cycles are part of the spec. Our installs stay in place through Québec winters, under the ice.

The product warranty is — the new owner keeps whatever remains of the twelve-year and three-year coverage. They need to notify us in writing within 30 days of the deed of sale. The three-year labour warranty stays with the original owner and does not transfer.

Damage from misuse, modifications or repairs by anyone other than Vision Bleu, a non-compliant electrical system, normal wear and natural discoloration, storms and other extreme weather events, force majeure, and Wi-Fi, network or software-compatibility issues. Everything else — a defective part under normal use — is covered on the schedule above.

Call (450) 999-7258 or email contact@visionbleu.com with your original invoice. We assess the issue and, if a part is at fault, repair or replace it — with no charge for the visit inside the first three years.