How Eternalight Is Bringing Permanent Lighting to Windsor-Essex
Christmas lights are a seasonal ritual. We untangle the strands, climb a ladder, fight with the clips, hope everything works, and then take them all down a few weeks later.
What if you could set up your Christmas lights with the flick of your phone? And, take them down just as easily? What if, the remainder of the year, they can serve as your permanent outdoor lighting, programmable, and exceedingly elegant.
For the owner of Eternalight Windsor, Joe Jones, the future of exterior lighting looks bright. Permanent LED lighting has become the focus of his business, with custom-installed systems designed to disappear into a home’s architecture during the day and transform it at night. The technology can produce traditional holiday colours, but it can also provide subtle architectural lighting, security lighting, and year-round accents—controlled through a smartphone or tablet.
Coming To The Lights
Jones originally wanted to pursue a career in education. He was always good with his hands but stuck to the academic route. “University was the only option that was ever presented to me,” he explains. After earning his teaching degree, he taught in Manitoba for a while before moving to Costa Rica with his wife. Eventually, the couple returned to Windsor, where he opened a business in the education field.
Unfortunately, during the pandemic, Jones’ brick and mortar business was forced to close for in-person hours. He needed something outside of the box, something to keep his head above water.
As the pandemic wore on, his wife, Katie, was researching permanent lighting for their house online. As an emergent industry, at the time, there were few companies offering the service outside of Toronto. Jones had an epiphany—this is something he had the skills and ability to excel at. Soon, he put up his first advertisement and the business took off.
“It was a really new product,” he says. “A lot of people didn’t even know it existed at that time.” What began as an experiment during an uncertain period quickly developed into a business of its own—Eternalight.
The market has changed considerably since then. “In the beginning, I was introducing the entire market to this, and now it’s a very well-known thing that exists,” he says. “My entire marketing shift has turned into why we are the best at it.”
It Comes Down To Craftsmanship
Eternalight installs Celebright, a Canadian-made permanent LED lighting system manufactured in Ottawa. Their low-profile aluminum track is custom-made for each home and can be matched to the existing aluminum used on its soffits, fascia, or gutters for a seamless, classy fit that holds up under daylight.
According to Jones, when the lights are off, they should look like they were always part of the house.
“The lights are off more than they’re on, so I measure my quality on how this looks during the day,” he explains. “If you have a really beautiful home, this completely blends in with your existing architecture, and your neighbours won’t even know that I’ve been there.”
It’s a philosophy that becomes particularly important on larger and more complicated homes. One installation he describes involved 43 individual sections of soffit and hundreds of feet of wiring. Rather than leaving visible wires on the exterior, his crew routed the low-voltage wiring through the attic, including a roughly 350-foot run that required a signal booster—and you wouldn’t even know.
“It took me almost three days to wire this house up, and there’s really a level of expertise and craftsmanship in this industry that people don’t understand,” he says. “There’s a lot more to it than people think.”
Jones encourages people to do their homework and look beyond those nighttime photos you’ll see on websites and social media accounts when researching outdoor lighting. Anyone can make a house look impressive after dark, when the lights themselves become the focal point.
“A really easy way to vet your contractor is to ask them to see photos of their work during the daytime,” he states. “The daytime is where you can see the quality, because the nighttime hides all of the issues.”
The difference often extends to the hardware itself. In his view, comparing systems solely by price ignores the differences in materials, design, installation, and long-term service.
“You can get a really cheap option for this and you can get a really high-quality option for this, and the range of qualities in this market is huge,” explains Jones. “If you’re comparing one house to the next in the evening, it’s like comparing two kitchens to each other when the lights are off.”
Rapidly Evolving Technology
Permanent outdoor lighting systems allow individual LEDs to be controlled through an app, meaning homeowners can be as specific and creative as they wish. Homeowners can illuminate every few bulbs for a subtle architectural effect, turn on just the lights around a porch, or light a walkway along the side of the house.
With complete customization, lighting warmth can be adjusted, or custom presets can be downloaded or created for holidays, parties, or anything to your liking.
On one LaSalle home, a homeowner uses every fifth light as an alternative to conventional pot lighting. Other customers use the system as a security feature, illuminating portions of their property when they are away.
“A well-lit home is a more secure home,” states Jones. “If there are 10 dark houses on the street and one bright one, those 10 dark homes are getting checked before that bright one.”
Technology, however, is only one part of what has made the business successful.
A Father/Son Team
Jones’ father works alongside him, bringing decades of hands-on experience to the job sites. For a business owner and family man, having someone he trusts completely has become invaluable. Joe Sr. was a paramedic by trade and always had skilled hands. In fact, he had built the home his family had grown up in.
“I work with my dad every day, and it doesn’t get past me how fortunate I am to be able to spend that much time with my dad as an adult,” says Jones, who has three sons of his own: Zeke (6), Levi (4), and Izzy (2). “This has allowed me to spend more time with my dad now than I have since I was probably 10 years old.”
That family connection is part of what makes the company’s growth both exciting and allowed them to fulfill demand. As time has gone on, and word has spread, Jones needs people he can trust so he can meet the demand that they are seeing.
“I don’t want to grow too big for my britches and just start passing out this work,” he says. “I want to do it in a responsible way where I can grow with the right guys, because if you do it before growth, you’re going to water down the product.” The company is gradually looking at partnerships that could allow it to expand throughout the region while maintaining the standards that built its reputation.
Bringing Joy Through Light
In May 2024, Jones was contacted by the Fight Like Mason Foundation about helping fulfill the wish of a young Windsor girl who was receiving cancer treatment. Rather than asking for a trip to Disneyland or to meet a pop star, her wish was to have permanent lights installed on her home.
Jones, a dedicated father, could not resist the urge to help.
While she was at school, his crew installed a fully automated lighting system, donating all materials and labour to the job. When she returned home, she was awestruck. He then sat with the child and allowed her to automate her own light pattern, picking the colour of each individual LED and creating her own rainbow pattern.
They saved the design in the Celebright preset library as “Katie’s Rainbow.” Then something unexpected happened. People from across the continent began downloading the preset. Soon, photographs started arriving from communities across North America—such as Dyer, IN, Sedalia, CO, and Lethbridge, AB—of Katie’s Rainbow lighting up the hearts of communities everywhere.
The preset eventually became a featured design in the app and was even one of its most downloaded presets.
“It was one of the best days’ work I ever had, just getting to do that for her and seeing her so happy,” recalls Jones. “The whole experience kind of epitomized that idea of bringing joy through light for me.”
A New Standard In Lighting
Permanent outdoor lighting may be a product, but for the people installing it, the appeal is ultimately about what happens after the work is finished. It will give your home a feel that fits, create an amazing holiday display, give your property an elegant look year-round, or maybe even bring joy to a child.
Jones believes that Windsor-Essex is still catching up with a trend that is already well established in other parts of Canada. He expects permanent exterior lighting eventually to become a standard consideration when new homes are built, rather than something homeowners retrofit later.
“Five years ago, I was so far ahead of this that nobody even knew it existed,” he says. “We’re a few years from this locally being a line item on homes, because this is going to be something the average new home just has on it.”
For Eternalight, this goes beyond illuminating a home. It is about craftsmanship that holds up in daylight, technology that gives homeowners the freedom to create something personal, and lighting that can transform an ordinary evening into something memorable.
