What Are Eave Lights? A Complete Guide to Types, Uses, and Installation for Commercial Spaces

Eave lights are fixtures mounted along the underside of a roof’s overhanging edges — the structural ledge where the roofline extends beyond the building’s exterior walls. They project light outward and downward across façades, walkways, and surrounding surfaces, serving both functional and architectural purposes for residential and commercial properties alike.

What Are Eave Lights and How Do They Differ from Other Outdoor Lighting?

The term “eave lighting” gets used loosely, and it’s worth being precise. The eave is the bottom edge of a roof that overhangs the wall below. Fixtures installed on or directly under that overhang are eave lights. This distinguishes them from two commonly confused alternatives:

Soffit lights are recessed into a horizontal ceiling panel (the soffit) and direct light straight downward. The beam is focused and defined.
Eave lights mount along the underside of the roof edge itself and cast a broader, more diffused wash of light across nearby walls and ground surfaces.
Floodlights and eave-mounted flood lights share the eave position but use a concentrated high-output beam aimed at a specific area rather than ambient perimeter illumination.

In commercial settings, this distinction matters. A retail storefront using eave-mounted flood lights to blast a parking lot is solving a different problem than a hotel entrance using LED eave lights for a warm, architectural wash along the building’s façade. Both qualify as eave lighting — the fixture type and beam pattern determine the effect.

The output of eave lighting is described well by the wall-wash effect: light rolls down the exterior surface evenly, reducing hard shadows and giving the building perimeter a soft, continuous glow. This is why under-eave lighting has become a default choice for commercial curb appeal, perimeter security, and branded storefront identity.

Types of Eave Lights: Choosing the Right Fixture for Commercial Use

Permanent LED Eave Lights

Permanent outdoor eave lights are the current standard for commercial installations. These systems use aluminum-railed LED channels or track-mounted modules installed once and left in place year-round. Key specs to evaluate:

IP rating: For most commercial climates, IP65 is the minimum (dustproof and rain-resistant). Coastal or high-humidity environments warrant IP67 or IP68.
Voltage: Low-voltage 24V DC systems are common for LED strip-based permanent eave lights and require a transformer connected to the building’s 120V supply. Fixed wired commercial fixtures typically run on standard line voltage.
Lifespan: Quality permanent outdoor eave lights typically carry a 50,000-hour LED lifespan, translating to over a decade of nightly use.
Color options: RGBW configurations combine red, green, blue, and tunable warm white LEDs, allowing a property to shift from everyday neutral white to branded colors or seasonal themes without replacing any hardware.

Permanent eave lighting fixtures are well-suited to storefronts, hotel exteriors, restaurants, office campuses, and any property where lighting is part of the brand identity.

LED Eave Strip Lights

LED strip lights for eaves offer flexibility that rigid fixtures can’t match. Thin, flexible PCB strips with surface-mount LEDs adhere to curved, angled, or irregular eave profiles and can be cut to exact lengths. For commercial applications, the relevant specs are:

Density: Higher LED-per-meter counts (60+ LEDs/m) produce smoother, more uniform output — important along long rooflines where individual LED points would be visible from street level.
Drive current: Commercial-grade strips use constant-current drivers that maintain consistent brightness across long runs, preventing the dim-end effect common with cheap residential strips.
Diffuser channels: Aluminum extrusion channels with frosted polycarbonate diffusers are the professional approach — they protect the strip, dissipate heat, and soften the light into a clean linear source rather than a dotted line.

Under eave LED lighting using strip systems works especially well for covered walkways, pergola structures, canopies, and building entries where a continuous luminous line reads better than individual fixtures.

Eave-Mounted Flood Lights and Security Lights

For security and area illumination, eave-mounted security lights and eave-mounted flood lights use the overhanging roof as a natural mounting point — elevated and sheltered from direct weather exposure. Motion sensor eave lights are a common variant: they remain off or in a low-output standby mode until triggered, which extends LED life and reduces operating costs.

Commercial eave security lighting should be specified with:

Beam angle matched to the area being covered (narrow beams for long-distance reach, wide beams for broad coverage)
CCT (correlated color temperature) in the 4000K–5000K range for clear visibility
A minimum CRI of 70 for accurate color rendering in monitored areas

Solar Eave Lights

Solar eave lights eliminate wiring costs and can be deployed on structures without convenient electrical access — outbuildings, covered parking structures, or remote signage areas. The trade-off is output consistency: solar systems depend on charge accumulation, which varies with weather and season. For commercial applications requiring guaranteed illumination levels, solar eave lights work best as supplemental rather than primary sources.

RGB Eave Lights

RGB eaves lights with app or smart-controller integration have become a business tool as much as a lighting product. Retailers, restaurants, event venues, and franchise businesses use programmable RGB systems to shift color themes for promotions, holidays, sporting events, or brand awareness campaigns — all from a centralized app without physically touching the hardware. Commercial-grade RGB systems support zone control, scheduling up to 12 months in advance, and integration with platforms like Google Home or Alexa.

Eave Lighting Ideas for Commercial Spaces

Applying eave lighting effectively in commercial contexts requires thinking about the architectural role each zone plays, not just lumen output.

Storefront entry emphasis: Use warm white under-eave LED lighting (2700K–3000K) directly above building entrances to create a welcoming threshold. The color temperature signals approachability and visually distinguishes the entry from the broader façade.

Perimeter security layer: Install motion sensor eave lights at regular intervals along building sides and rear access points. A common professional spacing guideline is one fixture every 8 feet for even coverage, adjusted for mounting height and beam angle.

Façade wall-wash: Mounting eave lighting fixtures 2–4 inches from the wall and angling them slightly inward maximizes wall-wash depth. This works particularly well on textured masonry, brick, or board-and-batten exteriors where the grazing light reveals surface dimension.

Branded RGB displays: Permanent RGB eave lights allow a business to visibly participate in community events, awareness campaigns, or seasonal moments without temporary installations. A business can run its standard brand color on weekdays and shift to holiday or awareness colors on specific dates using pre-set schedules.

Canopy and covered walkway illumination: Commercial properties with covered patron walkways — restaurants, shopping centers, hotels — benefit from continuous LED eave strip lighting mounted inside the canopy edge. It provides functional pedestrian lighting while creating a signature visual identity visible from the street.

How to Install Eave Lights: Commercial Installation Considerations

Pre-Installation Planning

Before purchasing any fixtures, three things need to be established:

Structural review: Confirm the eave or fascia can support the fixture weight and mounting method. Aluminum eave rails on commercial buildings are typically straightforward; wood-framed residential-style overhangs on mixed-use properties may require blocking between rafters.
Electrical access: Identify existing circuits, their capacity, and how wiring will be routed to reach each fixture location. For permanent hardwired eave light installation, most jurisdictions require an electrical permit and sign-off by a licensed electrician.
IP and code compliance: Commercial outdoor lighting must meet local electrical codes, and in many municipalities, permanent exterior lighting installations require permits regardless of voltage.

Eave Light Installation Steps

Step 1: Surface preparation Clean the mounting surface thoroughly. Remove any old adhesive, paint flakes, or debris. A dry, clean surface is essential for adhesive-backed systems; for screw-mounted fixtures, ensure the eave material is sound and that mounting points align with structural members where possible.

Step 2: Mark fixture positions Use a measuring tape to lay out fixture positions. For strip lights, snap a chalk line along the eave edge. For individual fixtures, mark center points and confirm spacing is consistent. A level reference line prevents visible alignment errors that become obvious once lit.

Step 3: Run wiring Thread wiring before mounting fixtures. For low-voltage systems, run the wire from the transformer location through the eave cavity or along the fascia using cable clips. For line-voltage systems, this phase requires a licensed electrician to ensure code compliance.

Step 4: Mount fixtures Attach fixtures per manufacturer specs. Screw-mount channels into the eave substrate at recommended intervals (typically every 12–24 inches for strip channel systems). For adhesive-mounted systems, apply firm pressure for the manufacturer-specified duration — commercial-grade adhesive systems typically specify 8–10 seconds of firm contact per section.

Step 5: Connect and test With power off at the breaker, make all wiring connections. Turn power on and verify each section illuminates evenly. Check for dim zones, flickering, or sections that don’t respond, all of which indicate connection issues that are easier to resolve before the installation is fully secured.

Step 6: Secure and weatherproof Seal any penetrations through the eave surface with appropriate weatherproof sealant. Confirm all wire entry points are protected from moisture ingress. On systems using external transformers or control boxes, ensure these are mounted in weatherproof enclosures rated for outdoor use.

LED Eave Lights: Why LED Is Now the Default

The shift to LED eave lights in commercial applications is essentially complete. The performance case is straightforward: LED fixtures use up to 75% less electricity than equivalent incandescent sources, with operating life measured in tens of thousands of hours versus hundreds for traditional bulbs. For under eave LED lighting running six to eight hours per night, a 50,000-hour rating translates to 17–23 years before the LED source reaches end of life.

Beyond energy and longevity, LED eave lights offer:

Instant-on performance with no warm-up delay — important for motion-activated security applications
Consistent color temperature across the fixture’s life, unlike HID sources that shift color as they age
Low thermal output, which reduces heat buildup in enclosed eave cavities
Dimming compatibility, enabling lighting control systems to reduce output during low-traffic periods

For large commercial installations, the ROI calculation typically includes energy savings, reduced maintenance labor, and lower lamp replacement costs compared to traditional sources.

Under Eave Lighting for Seasonal and Holiday Displays

Under eave Christmas lights and seasonal displays represent a specific-use case that permanent eave lighting systems have largely absorbed. Traditional holiday installations involve annual mounting and removal of string lights, which carries both labor costs and the wear-and-tear that comes from seasonal exposure.

Permanent outdoor eave lights with RGB capability solve this directly: the infrastructure stays in place year-round and the color or pattern changes via app. Christmas lights for eaves have effectively evolved from temporary decorations into scheduled programming on a permanent system. From an operational standpoint, a restaurant or retail business that was previously spending time and money on seasonal installations can recover that cost within a few years against a permanent system’s upfront investment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between eave lights and soffit lights?

Eave lights are mounted on or directly under the projecting roof edge (the eave) and typically wash light outward and downward across the exterior wall. Soffit lights are recessed into a horizontal ceiling panel (the soffit) and project light directly downward. In practice, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but technically they describe different mounting positions and different light distribution patterns.

What IP rating do outdoor eave lights need for commercial use?

IP65 is the standard minimum for most commercial outdoor eave lighting — it provides full dust protection and resistance to low-pressure water jets (i.e., rain). Properties in coastal environments, regions with heavy snowfall, or industrial areas with high particulate exposure should specify IP67 or IP68, which provide full submersion protection.

Do permanent eave lights require an electrician?

For any hardwired permanent eave light installation — whether line voltage or low-voltage with a transformer — most jurisdictions require the work to be performed or signed off by a licensed electrician and covered by an electrical permit. DIY adhesive LED systems that plug into an existing outdoor outlet typically don’t trigger permit requirements, but commercial properties should verify local codes before proceeding.

How far apart should eave lights be spaced for even coverage?

A practical starting point is one fixture per 8 feet of eave run, adjusted for mounting height and beam angle. For strip-based under eave LED lighting, continuous installation with no gaps is the norm. Individual recessed or surface-mount fixtures follow the “half-height rule” used in soffit lighting: space fixtures at a distance roughly equal to half the mounting height to ensure beam overlap and avoid dark gaps.

The variety of products now labeled as “eave lights” covers a wide range — from simple plug-in LED strips to engineered permanent commercial systems with app control and smart home integration. For commercial spaces specifically, the decision typically comes down to whether the lighting is solving a security problem, an aesthetic problem, or both, since each goal favors a different fixture type, placement strategy, and control method. Getting those parameters right before purchasing equipment is what separates a clean, professional installation from one that needs to be redone.

Key Takeaways

Eave lights mount under roof overhangs and produce a broad wall-wash effect, distinct from the focused downward beam of soffit lights
LED eave lights are the current standard for commercial use, offering up to 75% energy savings and 50,000+ hour lifespans
Permanent outdoor eave lights with RGB capability replace seasonal string-light installations with year-round programmable systems
Commercial eave light installation generally requires permits and licensed electrical work for any hardwired configuration
IP65 is the minimum weatherproofing standard for commercial outdoor eave lighting; coastal and industrial environments warrant IP67 or IP68

Data Sources

U.S. Department of Energy — LED energy efficiency statistics (energy.gov)
Lumilum LED Lighting — Soffit vs. Eave vs. Cove Lighting comparison (lumilum.com)
Bees Lighting — Commercial soffit and eave lighting specifications (beeslighting.com)
Oelo Outdoor Commercial LED Lights — Commercial permanent eave system specs (oelo.com)