Where we install, and how to reach us.

The island reads vertically. Duplexes and triplexes with outside staircases, brick rows, cornices and parapets: the facade sits close to the sidewalk and gives itself up in a single look. Greystone in Westmount and Outremont. In the West Island, post-war bungalows and cottages, with more setback and more trees.

On a narrow lot there is no room for floodlights on the ground. The line is already there — the cornice, the parapet, the lintel. That is where permanent exterior lighting goes: invisible by day, drawn after dark. Inside, the high ceilings and deep mouldings of older flats suit cove lighting particularly well.

Across the bridge the scale changes. Chomedey and Laval-des-Rapides keep their post-war bungalows. Blainville, Terrebonne and Mirabel line up new neighbourhoods of two-storey houses: garage to the front, stone at ground level, fibre cement above. The streets are wide and the rooflines repeat from house to house.

A new roofline is one continuous line: soffits, gables, dormers. It can be underlined in a single stroke, and what you see from the street is the whole house rather than pieces of it. This is where exterior lighting and holiday lighting stop being two things: one system does both, with no ladder in December.

Longueuil and Brossard grew up in the sixties and seventies: bungalows, split-levels, hedges that have had time to fill in. Boucherville and Saint-Bruno have larger lots and real trees. Further southwest, the Châteauguay valley and the Haut-Saint-Laurent turn rural: farmhouses, deep yards, back roads.

This is back-yard country. Pools, decks, mature maples — half the value of a property sits behind the house, and it disappears at dusk. Landscape lighting gives it back, while exterior lighting holds the front.

Vaudreuil-Soulanges is an unusual mix. Saint-Lazare has wooded acre lots and houses you only half-see through the trees. Hudson keeps its older, lower village houses in wood. L'Île-Perrot, Saint-Zotique and Coteau-du-Lac face the water. In between, back roads and fields.

Out here a house is seen coming. Long driveways, deep setbacks, sometimes a facade turned to the river rather than the street. Exterior lighting works first as a marker on the approach, and landscape lighting carries the rest of the property: the drive, the trees, the shoreline.

The Route 15 corridor is timber and stone. Saint-Sauveur, Sainte-Adèle, Val-David, Mont-Tremblant: steep roofs, dark-stained cedar, gables, porches. Many houses sit among the trees rather than in front of them, and the driveway matters as much as the facade.

Stained wood absorbs light instead of returning it, and winter closes the day at four in the afternoon. Exterior lighting set on the roofline gives the chalet its shape back when everything else is black, and landscape lighting marks the entrance and the steps before anyone has found a shovel.

Lanaudière shifts twice. Repentigny and L'Assomption are suburban. Joliette is a real brick town with planted streets. Then, further north, Rawdon and Chertsey turn to lakes and woodland, with cottages that became year-round houses. In between, farmland and long back roads.

Lots are wide and the house usually sits well back from the road. At that distance a ground floodlight only glares: it is the roofline that carries. Exterior lighting that disappears by day holds the facade after dark, and landscape lighting takes the trees and the approach.

The Richelieu valley has stone and brick older than most of the suburbs: Chambly, Beloeil, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, and village houses along the river. East of that, Saint-Hyacinthe is an agricultural town with commercial strips, and Rougemont and Saint-Paul-d'Abbotsford are orchards.

Masonry takes light differently from siding: it has grain, and a grazing light returns its texture instead of flattening it. That is what exterior lighting set high above the wall does. On the commercial buildings along the road, the same system reads as a sign after dark and as holiday lighting in December.

The Townships have a building stock of their own: gables, brick and painted wood inherited from the settlements. Sherbrooke is on a slope, and facades read from one street to the next. Magog and Orford face the lake, with larger contemporary houses. Bromont and Sutton climb the mountain. Granby and Cowansville hold the middle.

A house on a hillside or facing a lake is seen from far off, usually from below or from the opposite shore. What matters then is the line, not the intensity: exterior lighting that follows the roof reads from a kilometre away without lighting the sky. Around it, landscape lighting holds the trees and the slope down to the water.

Drummondville and Victoriaville are working towns, built in brick, with wide streets and new neighbourhoods at the edges. Between them, Saint-Germain-de-Grantham, Kingsey Falls and Acton Vale are rural municipalities. Nicolet and Bécancour face the river.

Rooflines here are straightforward — bungalow, two-storey, attached garage — and that is an advantage: a clean line goes on in a day and asks for nothing afterwards. Permanent exterior lighting replaces the security floodlight, the spotlights and the holiday lighting in one go.

Trois-Rivières has an old quarter of stone and brick and a riverfront. Shawinigan keeps its industrial-era housing, dense and square. Around them, Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, Saint-Boniface and Yamachiche are rural, and Saint-Jean-des-Piles is already in the woods, on the park side.

This is the northernmost ground we name, and the winter is long: dark comes early and snow returns everything. Light set on the roofline takes advantage of that — it works at lower output for a cleaner result. Exterior lighting holds the facade, landscape lighting holds the property.

Gatineau is one name and several places. Aylmer has its older stone houses and its recent riverside developments. The Hull sector is dense and older. The Gatineau sector runs to post-war bungalows and new neighbourhoods climbing toward the hills.

The distance from LaSalle changes how a job is planned, not the job: it is a full project rather than a visit. What goes on there is the same permanent system as anywhere else — exterior lighting on the roofline, and holiday lighting with nothing added in December.