Game Day Lights: Showing Team Colors on Your Roofline

Flags and yard signs are one way to show who you are cheering for. Lighting the whole roofline in team colors is another, and it is the one the neighbors notice from the end of the street. With permanent lights, game day house lights are not a project: you pick the colors once, save the look, and switch it on from your phone before kickoff. Here is how to get team colors that actually look right, and how to set them up so the house is ready every week of the season.

• Getting Team Colors to Look Right
• Solid, Split or Moving Patterns
• Setting It Up to Run Itself
• Watch Parties and Big Wins
• A House Divided and Other Setups
• Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Team Colors to Look Right

Team colors are designed for jerseys and logos, not for light. Some translate perfectly and some need adjusting. Bright blues, reds, greens and teals look strong on a roofline because LEDs produce those colors cleanly.

Other colors are harder. Gold and yellow can drift toward green or orange depending on the mix. Brown and maroon are difficult for any colored LED, because light adds color rather than darkening it, so a deep brown usually reads as a dull orange. Black cannot be shown at all, since black is simply the absence of light.

The fix is to tune the color by eye at night, not to match a number from the team’s style guide. Stand at the street, look at the house, and adjust until it reads as your team. For a black-and-something team, use the second color with gaps of unlit lights between groups, which suggests the darker color. A gold that looks green is usually fixed by adding more red to the mix.

Gemstone says its lights can show over 16 million colors, which gives plenty of room to fine-tune. Once you have the right shades, save them as a custom pattern in the Gemstone Lights app so you only do this once.

Solid, Split or Moving Patterns

There are three basic ways to show team colors, and each has its place.

• Alternating: groups of lights in each color repeating along the roofline. This is the most recognizable look and works for almost any two-color team.
• Split by section: one color on the main roof and the other on a gable, garage or porch. Clean and bold on houses with clear sections.
• Moving: the colors chase, fade or pulse along the roofline. Great for a party, a big game or a win, but tiring to look at for a whole evening.

Group size matters for the alternating look. Very small groups blur together from the street, so the two colors mix into a third. Larger groups keep each color distinct. Try a few sizes and judge them from the end of the driveway, not from under the eave.

For most homes, a steady alternating pattern is the everyday game-day look and a moving pattern is saved for the moments that deserve it. Lights along the edges of the house, which our trim lighting covers, show either one clearly from the road.

Setting It Up to Run Itself

The best part of permanent lights for sports fans is that nobody has to remember. In the Gemstone Lights app, you can create a timer that runs a saved pattern, so team colors come on at dusk on game days and the house returns to its everyday warm white afterward.

Set up a timer for the regular game day of the week, plus one for the everyday look on other nights. When the schedule changes for a special game, a quick change in the app moves it. Playlists, which play several saved patterns one after another, can rotate between your team look and a moving celebration pattern through the evening.

Keep your team patterns in their own folder in the app so they are easy to find alongside your holiday looks. The same lights handle the rest of the year too, from warm white on ordinary nights to the colors you choose for the holidays, which our holiday lighting installation page covers. The Gemstone Lights page explains the system in more detail.

Watch Parties and Big Wins

When friends come over for a big game, the lights can join in. Music Mode in the Gemstone Lights app sets the lights moving with sound: place your phone near the music source, such as the speaker playing the pregame show, and the roofline follows along in your team colors.

For the win itself, have a celebration pattern saved and ready. A fast chase or a pulsing flash in team colors, triggered from your phone as the clock runs out, turns the house into part of the party. Keep it to a short burst, then switch back to the steady team look.

If the party spreads to the back of the house, eave lights over a patio or lanai can run the same colors. Lights tucked under the soffit, part of our soffit lighting installation, give the outdoor seating area its own glow without shining in anyone’s eyes.

Be a good neighbor on late nights. A steady pattern is easier to live next to than a flashing one at midnight, so set the timer to end the show at a reasonable hour.

A House Divided and Other Setups

Not every household cheers for the same team. Zones solve that. When the roofline is split into zones in the app, each zone can play its own pattern, so one side of the house shows one team and the other side shows the rival. It is a fun way to settle a rivalry, at least until the final score.

Zones also help families who follow more than one sport. A college team on Saturday and a pro team on Sunday can each have a saved pattern and their own timer.

The same idea works for businesses. A restaurant or shop can light up in the home team’s colors for game days and switch back to its own brand colors the rest of the week, all on a schedule.

Ready to light up for the season? Get in touch with M2 Accents. We visit, walk you through the options and the steps, and then send a quote. We install permanent lights for homeowners in St. Augustine, Vilano Beach and nearby, and once the system is in, we show you how to save your team colors in the app so they are ready every week.

Frequently Asked Questions