Design by home style
Lighting a brick colonial without turning it into a carnival
A brick colonial is the easiest house in Western PA to light well and the easiest to overdo. Symmetry does most of the work. Trace the eave line, respect the center door, keep the color warm, and let the brick carry the rest.
Why colonials light so cleanly
A colonial is a rectangle with a door in the middle. Two stories, five windows across the top, four across the bottom with the entry between them, and a roof that runs side to side. That symmetry is the whole design language, and lighting only has to respect it to look expensive.
Brick adds the second advantage. Red and orange brick absorbs cool light and throws warm light back at the street. The masonry does not need color to look good after dark; it needs the right white and a clean edge along the roof.
The Pittsburgh suburbs are full of these houses. Fox Chapel, Upper St. Clair, Mt. Lebanon and the newer plans around Butler all have streets of two-story brick with black shutters and a white portico. Most of our colonial installs start with a neighbor's house lit the same way. See thraxel.com/areas/fox-chapel/ for that corner of the map.
Where the track goes
The main run sits on the front fascia, the flat board under the edge of the roof where the gutter hangs. On a side-gable colonial that is one long horizontal line across the front of the house at second-floor ceiling height. That single line is 70 percent of the look.
If the gables face the street, or if the house has a front-facing wing, the track follows the rake boards up to the peak and back down. Side-gable houses only get the rakes traced when they are visible from the road; lighting an edge nobody can see wastes pixels and money.
Porticos and porch roofs get their own short run so the entry reads as the center of the house. Attached garages get traced separately so they can dim independently. Dormers, when a colonial has them, get a small run across each dormer eave rather than a full outline. Product details live at thraxel.com/permanent/.
Zones that make sense
Zones are groups of pixels the app addresses on their own. A colonial usually wants four to six. Every zone can run a different color or brightness, which is how the portico stays bright while the garage sits at half.
One Erie colonial in our 2023 to 2025 project tracking had 312 feet of roofline broken into six zones, and it appraised $42,000 higher afterward. That figure is directional, not a promise, but it shows what happens when the zoning matches the architecture instead of fighting it. Two neighbors on the same street signed up that season.
- Front roofline, the long horizontal run
- Front-facing gables or wing rakes
- Portico or porch roof and its columns
- Garage eave, run separately so it can dim
- Dormers, if present, as one shared zone
- Landscape, if uplights sit on the same controller
Scenes that flatter brick
Warm white first. Our pixels carry a dedicated 2700K warm-white diode, so the everyday look is a real incandescent tone and not a blend of red, green and blue pretending to be white. On red brick, that reads as candlelight. Cool white turns the same brick a flat gray.
For holidays, red and green sit naturally on brick because red is already in the wall. Game Day black and gold works because the gold pops against the red and the black reads as off. Halloween orange and purple is the one scene where a colonial gets to be loud, and it earns it.
Skip saturated blue as a full-house wash. Blue on red brick muddies both. Use blue as an accent on white trim zones, the portico or the dormers, and keep the roofline warm behind it. The Thraxel Lighting app sets each zone separately, so the mix is a two-minute job.
HOA and trim-color notes
Colonial neighborhoods tend to have architectural review boards, and colonial owners tend to care about trim. Both are fine. The aluminum track is color-matched to the fascia, so white trim gets white track and black trim gets black. From the sidewalk in daylight, the roof edge looks the same as it did before.
Every HOA we have submitted to has approved the system. The submission usually needs a photo of the track color against the trim and a note that the lights are off by default during the day. We handle that paperwork with you before install day. More on the process at thraxel.com/blog/how-to-get-hoa-approval-for-exterior-lighting/.
One trim note: if the fascia is cream or almond rather than pure white, say so at the consult. We match the actual board, not a paint-chip guess, and a near-miss white is the only way track ever becomes visible by day.
Landscape pairing
Brick wants grazing light. An uplight set 12 to 18 inches off the wall, aimed straight up between windows, catches every mortar joint and turns a flat wall into texture. On a five-bay colonial, four uplights between the windows and two flanking the door do the job.
Foundation plantings on colonials are usually boxwood, holly or yew, kept low and formal. Keep the fixtures behind the hedge line so the source is hidden and the wall gets the light. A pair of path lights along the front walk finishes the approach to the center door. The technique is in thraxel.com/blog/stone-and-brick-facade-uplighting/.
Run the landscape on astronomical timers so it tracks sunset through the year, and keep the roofline and landscape on the same warm white. Two different whites on one facade is the most common mistake we fix.
How to start
Book the free on-site consult and we bring the demo case: four live RGBWW strips, 128 LEDs, controlled from the app on your driveway. Within 48 hours you get a render of your own colonial, not a stock house, with the zones drawn on it. Text Tyson at 724-859-4390 to get on the calendar.
