Slate Truck Lighting

What’s the difference between Slate lamp plates and a lamp upgrade?

A $49.99 lamp plate changes how your lights look. A $349.99–$499.99 lamp upgrade changes the lamp assembly itself. This is the single most confusing thing in Slate’s lighting section, and the naming does nothing to help — “lamp plates” and “lamp upgrade” sit next to each other in the same category with a 7–10x price gap between them.

Plates are personalization. They come in six patterns, front and rear, and every one of them is rated a Beginner install — the same rating Slate gives its stick-on and snap-on parts. Upgrades are hardware. They’re rated Moderate to Advanced, they cost real money, and they’re the only items in this section that plausibly change what the truck actually projects onto the road.

If you’re shopping to make the truck look different, buy plates. If you’re shopping because you want to see better at night, plates will not do it.

What do Slate lamp plates cost, and what patterns are there?

Every lamp plate set is $49.99, in six patterns, available for both the front and the tail lamps. Front and rear are sold separately, so a matched set front-to-back is $99.98.

Twelve SKUs, one price. That flat pricing is a good sign that these are the same part in different graphics, and it makes the decision purely aesthetic. Nothing in Slate’s listings describes how the plates attach or whether they’re swappable more than once — if you plan to rotate patterns seasonally, confirm that before buying three sets [VERIFY attachment method and re-usability].

One thing worth thinking through: a patterned plate sits in front of a lit lamp. Anything that covers part of a headlight or tail lamp lens has the potential to change the light output pattern, and lighting equipment is federally regulated. Slate is selling these as factory accessories, which implies they’ve been engineered around that, but we have no compliance documentation to point at [VERIFY DOT/FMVSS 108 compliance of lamp plates].

What do the Slate lamp upgrades and auxiliary lights cost?

The functional tier runs from $139.95 for bed lighting to $799.95 for the rooftop bar, and nearly all of it is rated an Advanced install.

Every item in the Off-Road & Auxiliary Lights section carries a compatibility-notes flag in Slate’s configurator — all five of them, and none of the lamp plates or lamp upgrades. That’s a consistent pattern rather than a coincidence: the auxiliary lights are the lighting products with fitment conditions attached. Slate doesn’t publish what those conditions are in the catalog listing, so before ordering any of the five, open the item in the configurator and read the notes against your own body style and roof rack plan. The rooftop bar in particular has to coexist with whatever else is on the roof.

Prices from Slate’s configurator, captured July 6 2026 and re-verified unchanged on August 10 2026. Note the gap: the non-animated Front Lamp Upgrade is still unpriced, while the animated version is live at $349.99. If you want the plain front upgrade, you’re waiting — and the pending price makes it hard to judge what the animation premium actually is. On the tail end the delta is clear: $125 more for animated ($374.99 vs $499.99), and animation also pushes the install rating from Moderate to Advanced.

What “Animated” means is not documented anywhere we can cite. It most likely refers to a sequential or startup/shutdown light sequence, but Slate hasn’t published a description, a video, or a spec [VERIFY what “Animated” does]. Do not spend $500 on a word.

Building out the truck? Price every lighting SKU against the rest of your list in the Slate accessory price database before you commit to a category — the gap between the $49.99 tier and the $799.95 tier is most of a wheel upgrade.

Why is auxiliary lighting rated “Advanced” on the Slate?

Because you’re wiring into a truck with no factory infotainment and no published accessory-power story.

Every auxiliary item — pods, bar, rock lights, bed lights — needs three things: a power source, a ground, and a switch. On a conventional truck you’d tap an upfitter circuit or an aux switch panel. On the Slate, none of that is publicly documented. There’s no touchscreen to bury a control menu in, either; the Slate deliberately ships without a factory head unit.

Slate does list The Five Switch in Interior > Tech, $39.99, in both a Standard and an Upgrade version, both rated Advanced. A five-position switch panel is exactly the shape of a solution to this problem, and it’s the obvious candidate. But Slate has not published documentation tying it to the lighting accessories, so we’re not going to tell you it’s the answer [VERIFY whether The Five Switch controls auxiliary lighting circuits]. Same for the underlying question of what accessory-power circuits the truck exposes and at what amperage [VERIFY 12V/accessory power provisions].

Five of the nine functional items — pods, bar, fogs, rock lights, bed lights — also carry compatibility notes in the configurator, which usually means “this doesn’t work with everything you might already have on the truck.” Read those notes at checkout before you assume a pod set and a bar coexist.

What about the roof-mounted light bar?

The 40-inch bar is $799.95 and lives on the roof, which means it shares real estate and load budget with the rack system. If you’re planning crossbars, a basket, or a tent, sequence the bar into that plan rather than bolting it on afterward — see Slate roof racks for how the roof system is architected and what its load limits are.

Two honest cautions. First, light bar legality on public roads varies by state — many jurisdictions require forward-facing auxiliary lights to be covered or wired so they can’t operate with the headlights on [VERIFY by state]. Second, weight: none of these parts is heavy, but a 40-inch bar plus mounts plus a pod set is not zero, and it’s roof weight, which is the worst kind. It comes out of the same 1,550 lb budget as everything else — the payload math guide covers how to track it.

What’s the no-wiring option?

MOLLE-mounted and portable lighting, which attaches to the panel kit instead of into the harness. This is the honest workaround for the whole Advanced-install problem: a rechargeable light puck, lantern, or strip mounted to a MOLLE panel gives you usable bed and camp light with zero electrical work and zero compatibility notes, and it moves to the tailgate or the campsite when you need it there.

It’s not as good as integrated lighting — you have to charge it, and it won’t come on with the dome lights. But it’s the only lighting you can add on day one, reversibly, for well under the price of any kit in the table above. BuiltRight co-developed the Slate MOLLE panel kit with Slate, and the panel is the mounting surface that makes this work; bed storage and MOLLE covers the system.

So what should you actually buy first?

Bed Light Kit, $139.95. It’s the cheapest functional item in the section, and it fixes the most real problem: a short bed is hardest to work in exactly when it’s dark, and you end up holding a phone in your teeth. It pairs directly with bed storage — drawers and boxes are far more usable lit. The catch is that it’s still rated Advanced, so price a shop into the $139.95 if you don’t do vehicle wiring.

After that, in order of honest usefulness: fog lights if you drive in real weather, rock lights if you drive off pavement, the bar last unless you have a specific job for it. And lamp plates whenever you want, at any time — they’re $49.99, Beginner, and entirely reversible, which makes them the one item here you never need to decide about before delivery. On sequencing the rest, see order now or add later.

If none of the Advanced-install items appeal, the no-wiring route above is a genuinely reasonable place to stop. A rechargeable light on a MOLLE panel solves the bed-at-night problem for a fraction of the cost, and nothing about it commits you — see bed storage for the mounting side.

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