Trimlight vs JellyFish vs Gemstone: a comparison from someone who sells none of them
If you have spent an evening researching permanent lighting, you have probably noticed something odd: nearly every “honest comparison” you find is hosted on the website of a company that installs exactly one of the brands being compared.
That is not a conspiracy, it is just how the category is built. Trimlight, JellyFish, Gemstone, Oelo and EverLights all sell through franchise and certified-dealer networks. A dealer is contractually limited to one product. When they write a comparison, the conclusion exists before the research does.
We are not a dealer for any of them. We specify whatever suits the house, which means we have no particular stake in which of these you choose — and no reason to pretend the differences are bigger or smaller than they are.
A note before anything else: specifications, warranties and pricing in this category change. Everything below reflects what these companies published as of writing, and you should confirm current terms directly before you sign anything. If something here has gone out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
The honest headline
For most homes, the installer matters more than the brand.
That is not a dodge. These are all competent systems from established manufacturers. A well-specified Trimlight install by someone careful will look better in five years than a badly planned Gemstone install by someone rushing, and the reverse is equally true. The failures we get called about are overwhelmingly installation failures — bad track alignment, penetrations in the wrong places, connections left where water sits — not diode failures.
So: choose the installer first. Then use the differences below to pick between them.
Where they genuinely differ
Warranty — the biggest gap, and the least discussed
This is the difference that would move me most on a five-figure purchase, and it is the one buried furthest down most sales pages.
| Published warranty | |
|---|---|
| Trimlight | Lifetime on all components — LEDs, channel, wiring, controller |
| Gemstone | Lifetime on the LEDs, 10 years on track, wiring, controller and power supplies |
| JellyFish | 3 years parts, 1 year labour |
That is a very wide spread. Read it carefully, though: a lifetime product warranty is not the same as a lifetime labour warranty. In most cases the part arrives free and someone still has to be paid to come out, put up a ladder, and fit it.
The question to ask any installer, of any brand: “Who pays for the labour in year six, and who is the person actually turning up?” Ask us too.
RGB versus RGBW — matters more than it sounds
Most of these systems mix red, green and blue diodes to produce white. Gemstone uses RGBW, with a dedicated white diode alongside the colour ones.
Here is why that is not a spec-sheet detail. The overwhelming majority of the time, your lights will be on warm white — that is the year-round mode almost everyone settles into after the novelty of colour wears off. White produced by mixing RGB is achievable but tends to drift, and different sections can drift differently as diodes age. A dedicated white diode is simply doing a job it was designed for.
If you are buying this mainly for the nine months that are not December, weight this heavily. If you genuinely want saturated colour most of the year, it matters far less.
Track, and what your house looks like in daylight
Ask yourself honestly how often you will look at this lit versus unlit. The track is on your house every day for a decade, in daylight, and it is the thing you cannot undo.
Gemstone publishes the widest range here — on the order of 151 track colours and 15 track types. Trimlight publishes 50-plus colours along with multiple bulb and spacing options. In practice what matters is whether your specific trim colour has a genuine match rather than an approximate one, and how the profile sits under your particular eave.
Do not choose this from a website. Get a physical sample of the actual track, in the actual colour, held against your actual trim, in daylight. Any installer who will not do that is not one to hire.
Price
Roughly, and installed:
| Typical installed range | |
|---|---|
| Trimlight | $18–$35 per foot |
| Gemstone | $22–$25 per foot |
| JellyFish | $25–$35 per foot, plus a controller commonly $650–$850 |
Watch for the controller. A per-foot rate that excludes it is not comparable to one that includes it — an $800 controller on a 200-foot home is $4 per foot of hidden cost. Always ask for the all-in number, and ask what it includes.
For transparency: our own rate is $35 per foot all-in with the controller included. We are at the upper end and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The question nobody puts on a comparison page
What happens to your warranty if your installer stops trading?
Franchise territories change hands. Dealers close. The manufacturer honours the product warranty, but the person who comes out with a ladder is a local business, and local businesses are not permanent.
Ask any installer — including us — how long they have been trading, what else they do, and who services this if they are gone. A company that only does permanent lighting has one season of revenue holding it up. We fix roofs the other ten months, which is not a virtue exactly, but it does mean the phone gets answered in February.
What we would actually tell you
If you want the best white light and the widest colour matching: the RGBW argument for Gemstone is real, especially if this is mostly a year-round white system.
If warranty is what keeps you up at night: Trimlight’s published lifetime-on-all-components terms are the most generous on paper. Read what is covered on labour.
If budget is the deciding factor: there are systems at the lower end of that price table that work perfectly well, and we will happily point you at them. Not every house needs the expensive answer.
If you are not sure you want permanent lighting at all: seasonal installation is a fraction of the cost and a much smaller commitment. It is genuinely the right answer for plenty of homes, particularly if you might move within a few years.
And the part that decides it
Whichever you pick, the install determines whether you are happy with it. Specifically:
- Where the fasteners go. Track belongs on fascia and trim — never through roofing material or flashing. We are a roofing contractor first, and permanently attached lighting done carelessly causes exactly the same water intrusion as a stapled seasonal strand, except it stays there. Here is what that damage looks like.
- Whether the lines follow the architecture. A run that sags or misses a transition is visible forever.
- Where the connections sit. Our wet season runs roughly October to May. Connection points in the wrong place are the most common in-service failure there is.
None of that appears on a brochure, and all of it is decided in a single day by whoever is on the ladder.
We install permanent LED lighting across Vancouver, WA and Clark County, independently rather than as anyone’s dealer. See our rate and how we approach it, or get in touch and we will tell you honestly whether it is the right call for your house.