St. Patrick's Day green, tuned so it does not look like a runway

Green is the easiest color a pixel makes

Every RGBWW pixel carries a green diode, and human eyes are more sensitive to green than to red or blue. Put those two facts together and a roofline in green at full brightness is the brightest thing on the block by a wide margin. That is the first thing we tell people about the St. Patrick's Day scene: run it at half the brightness you think you need.

St. Patrick's Day is one of the named scenes on every Thraxel permanent install, so it is already in the app the day the crew leaves. The default is a deep kelly green along the roofline at moderate brightness with warm white on the porch and door. Details on the system are at thraxel.com/permanent/.

Turn it up and it looks like an airport. Keep it at 40 percent and it looks like a house that is quietly Irish for a week.

Three greens and one flag

With 16 million colors on tap, green is a family, not a single setting. Kelly green is the classic and reads correctly from a distance. Emerald is deeper and sits better on brick. Lime is brighter and works as an accent on peaks or columns but is too much across a full eave.

For the Irish flag, the scene runs blocks of green, white and orange. The white block matters here the same way it does on the Fourth: Thraxel pixels have a dedicated warm-white diode, so the white segment is a true white rather than a pale mix that drifts toward blue next to the green.

Some people prefer green alone. Some want green and gold, which on a pixel is green plus a tuned amber. Both are a couple of taps to set up and save.

• Kelly: the default, roofline only, porch in warm white
• Emerald: deeper green for brick and stone homes
• Tricolor: green, white and orange blocks, no motion
• Shamrock: green eaves with a slow lime sparkle on the peaks

Parade weekend and the days around it

Pittsburgh's St. Patrick's Day parade is one of the larger ones in the country and usually falls on the Saturday before the 17th, so the scene gets more use than the date alone suggests. Turn it on the Thursday before parade weekend and leave it through the 17th. That is roughly a week of green for a single tap.

Butler, Freeport and the river towns have their own bar crawls and church dinners in the same window. If you host, the green roofline is the landmark people use to find the house. Our Pittsburgh coverage is at thraxel.com/areas/pittsburgh/.

On the 18th, tap Everyday Warm. The whole thing disappears and the house is back to 2700K warm white with nothing to take down.

March weather is not your problem

Mid-March in Western PA can deliver sleet, wet snow, freezing rain and a 60-degree afternoon in the same week. Seasonal strands hate that. Permanent pixels do not notice it.

Each Thraxel pixel is sealed in IP67 marine-grade silicone, salt-tested, and wired on 16-gauge wire inside aluminum track that is fastened to the fascia. Ice can form on the track and melt off without anything moving. The scene runs the same on a sleet night as it does on a clear one. More on that at thraxel.com/blog/do-permanent-lights-work-in-rain-and-snow/.

The only weather-related note is that snow on the roof edge can partially cover a pixel strip, which dims a section until it slides off. It is cosmetic and temporary. Nothing needs to be touched.

From green to spring

St. Patrick's Day is the last cold-weather scene on the calendar. After it, the same pixels move to pastels for Easter, warm white for the long stretch of spring evenings, and red, white and blue by the end of May. The full year, month by month, is at thraxel.com/blog/exterior-lighting-calendar-western-pa/.

If you are reading this in March with no permanent lighting on the house, the timing is actually good. Spring installs are quick, most homes take one or two days, and the system is in place for every scene that follows.

The consult is free, the render of your house comes back within 48 hours, and Tyson runs every quote personally. He is reachable by call or text at 724-859-4390.