DFW · Austin · San Antonio
Permanent Commercial LED Lighting for Businesses
Brand colors any night of the year. Built for Texas restaurants, retail, and offices.
Permanent commercial LED lighting is year-round architectural lighting for businesses — restaurants, retail, boutique hotels, patio dining, office buildings, and commercial real estate. The same hardware category as residential permanent LED, but installed on business exteriors for brand presence, customer attraction, and extended evening usability rather than holiday decoration.
A typical small restaurant or retail storefront runs $3,500–$8,000 installed, scaled to linear footage and complexity. Large commercial buildings and multi-property portfolios run higher. Every commercial install includes a workmanship warranty, priority service response, and a replacement bulb inventory held for your property. This is a marketing and customer-experience investment, not a seasonal decoration — budget and ROI are calculated differently than residential.
What it is
Year-round brand lighting for Texas businesses.
Permanent commercial LED lighting is the business-exterior version of the category that residential customers know as permanent Christmas lights. The hardware is similar: commercial-grade aluminum channel mounted along the fascia, individually-addressable LED bulbs, low-voltage wiring, a smart controller. What's different is the use case, the install standard, the service tier, and the ROI math.
Commercial customers rarely buy this for holidays. They buy it to make their business visible and inviting at night, to extend the usable hours of patios and outdoor dining, to signal brand presence on a commercial corridor where competitors are dark after sunset, and — for hospitality properties — to create the exact ambiance their guests are paying for. It's a marketing and customer-experience line item, not a seasonal decoration.
The category is growing fast in Texas. Restaurants with outdoor patios in Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio have been early adopters. Boutique hotels and B&Bs are next. Retail storefronts on walkable districts (Southlake Town Square, Legacy West, Stone Oak corridor) are starting to invest now that the first movers have proven the draw.
Why it matters
The difference between 'closed' and 'open' in the customer's eyes.
For most businesses, the hour between 6pm and 8pm is the window where ambient walk-by traffic either notices you or keeps walking. A lit, inviting exterior at that hour pulls customers into restaurants, retail, and hospitality properties that would otherwise look closed or uncared-for. An unlit exterior does the opposite — even an open business looks closed if its facade is dark.
Permanent commercial LED solves that problem permanently and cheaply. Once installed, your exterior looks warm and open every evening of the year, automatically, on a schedule you set once. No staff effort, no forgotten switches, no decorative install cost every season. The ROI conversation quickly becomes 'what's the value of one extra customer per night' — and for most businesses, that answers the question quickly.
For hospitality properties specifically — boutique hotels, resorts, venues, B&Bs — the effect is even more direct. Guest experience starts from the moment they pull into the property. A beautifully lit exterior at dusk is part of what you're selling at the room rate. Permanent LED systems deliver that on autopilot, 365 nights a year.
Commercial-grade hardware + service
What a commercial install includes beyond the residential spec.
The physical install uses the same commercial-grade hardware we use on high-end residential jobs: extruded aluminum channel, addressable IP65-rated LED bulbs, low-voltage wiring, smart controllers. What changes for commercial is the install standard and the service tier around it.
Commercial installs are done in coordination with your property management schedule to minimize business disruption. Most restaurant and retail jobs are scheduled for off-hours — early morning before opening, or full-day Monday closures for establishments that take Mondays off. Larger properties with hospitality operations get phased installs to keep guest-facing areas functional throughout.
The warranty tier is different too. Commercial customers get a priority service response time (typically 48 hours for critical failures), a replacement bulb inventory held on-site or at our warehouse for your specific property, and an annual maintenance visit option for properties where exterior lighting is mission-critical. Residential installs include lifetime warranty; commercial adds an SLA on top of it.
How it works
Four steps. One day. Every night after that.
- 01
Free on-site measurement
We come to your home, measure your roofline, review the architecture, and give you an exact quote — scoped to your home, not a ballpark from a spreadsheet.
- 02
Approval + HOA submission
Once you sign off, we prepare any HOA architectural review materials your neighborhood needs. Most Texas HOAs approve permanent LED systems on first submission.
- 03
Installation (typically one day)
The color-matched aluminum channel is installed behind your gutter line. Bulbs go inside the channel. Wiring runs clean. Most single-story Texas homes are done in a single day.
- 04
Activate your lights from your phone
We walk you through the app, set up your favorite presets, and hand off the system. Cowboys blue, warm white, holiday colors — all on tap from your couch.
Honest pricing
What would my home cost?
Adjust the sliders. See a real range. Then get a real quote.
A typical 2,400 sq ft single-story home has about 180 ft. A 5,500 sq ft estate closer to 400 ft.
Estimated install
Final quote after on-site measurement.
- Bulbs installed
- 540
- Annual electric cost
- ~$89/yr
The ROI conversation
Priced against marketing and customer acquisition, not home improvement.
The ROI math on commercial permanent LED is calculated differently than residential. For homeowners, the comparison is against buying temporary Christmas strands for fifteen years. For businesses, the comparison is against marketing spend per customer acquired.
A typical restaurant install pays for itself inside eighteen months if it contributes even a modest lift to walk-in traffic at the 6–9pm window. Boutique hotels with permanent LED typically see improved review mentions of 'beautiful at night' within the first few months — which directly affects booking rate. Retail storefronts in walkable districts see the benefit in foot-traffic count at dusk.
Commercial tax treatment is favorable in most cases. The install is generally capitalized as an exterior improvement and depreciated on the property's schedule. Your accountant will give you the specifics, but for many business owners, the effective cost after depreciation is materially lower than the sticker price.
Operating cost is trivial. A typical commercial install runs $50–$150 per year in electricity depending on size and runtime. That's rounding error against any marketing spend comparison.
How we stack up
Lonestar Glow vs. the alternatives
| Feature | Lonestar Glow | Trimlight | JellyFish | Govee | Temporary lights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stays up year-round | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Invisible during the day | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Partially | — |
| 16+ million colors | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| App-controlled | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Commercial-grade channel | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Professional installation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Lifetime product warranty | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 1 year | — |
| Local Texas team | ✓ | Franchise | Franchise | — | — |
| Honest upfront pricing on site | ✓ | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
Why Texas specifically
Long patio season, competitive hospitality markets.
Texas hospitality and retail have two specific tailwinds that make the commercial permanent LED category strong here. First, the outdoor patio season in Texas runs nine months out of the year — mid-March through November — which means exterior lighting is a meaningful customer experience factor for most of the calendar. Restaurants with lit patios fill; restaurants with dark patios don't.
Second, the affluent suburb walkable-district trend in Texas (Southlake Town Square, Legacy West, Domain, Stone Oak corridor, Pearl Brewery in San Antonio, Mueller in Austin) has created corridors where commercial tenants compete directly for evening foot traffic. Permanent LED is becoming table stakes in those corridors — early movers are picking up measurable walk-by traffic advantage, and late movers risk looking outdated.
We work with commercial customers across all three metros and can provide case studies and reference properties during the discovery call. Commercial jobs are quoted after an on-site walk and business-hours conversation about install timing, scheduling, and service-tier requirements.
Where we work
Genuinely local on every street.
Related services
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Permanent Commercial LED Lighting for Businesses — the questions we get asked
Hardware is comparable. The differences are install standard (scheduled around your business hours), service tier (48-hour response SLA, replacement bulb inventory held for your property, optional annual maintenance visits), warranty structure (residential has lifetime product warranty; commercial adds an SLA on top), and ROI framing (calculated against marketing spend, not against home improvement).
Yes. Larger commercial properties get phased installs with lift equipment appropriate to the height. We handle two-story retail, restaurants with rooftop patios, small boutique hotels, and office buildings up to three stories on a routine basis. Four-plus story commercial requires additional coordination but is within our capability.
We work with both single-location operators and chain franchisees. For chain operations, we can coordinate a multi-property install schedule and provide consistent branding across locations. Franchise operators sometimes have corporate-mandated exterior design standards; we coordinate directly with corporate facilities teams when required.
For commercial installs, yes — we walk through color schemes, scene programming, and seasonal schedules with the owner or marketing team during install. Common scenes include 'open for service' warm white, 'private event' dim amber, 'special occasion' brand colors, and holiday presets. We don't do full marketing consulting, but we'll help you get the most out of the programmable system.
Commercial customers have priority service. Typical response is 48 hours for critical failures (visible dead sections, system-wide outages) and a scheduled visit within a week for non-critical issues (single bulb out, app settings). We hold replacement bulb inventory for your specific property so parts availability is never an issue.
Yes, through third-party commercial lenders we work with. Terms are typically 24–60 month amortization at fixed rates, with the install cost depreciating on your property schedule during that period. We can also structure installs as capital improvements under your commercial lease if applicable. Your accountant should weigh in on the tax treatment.
A typical single-story restaurant or retail storefront takes one to two days depending on linear footage and access. Larger properties and multi-story buildings run three to five days. We schedule around your operating hours — most restaurant jobs happen during Monday closures or pre-opening morning windows to avoid disrupting service.
Ready for your free quote?
Free on-site measurement. Exact quote back to you within 24 hours.