Christmas Light Installation Pricing Calculator: what to charge per linear foot

Price a holiday lighting job from your own rates: roofline linear feet by storey, trees and wraps, timers, takedown, storage and a minimum, priced as one season package.

What you are quoting

Seasonal install Permanent lighting

Roofline, by storey

Measure in

feet metres

Single-storey roofline

Eave and gable runs you can reach from a ladder standing on the ground.

Two-storey roofline

Taller ladder, repositioned more often, usually two people.

Three storey or roof-edge

Work performed from the roof rather than a ladder.

Your rate per linear foot

Your number, for a single-storey foot. The storey factors below do the rest.

Steep or complex pitch uplift

Applied to the roofline lines only, never to the fixtures. Leave at 0 for a walkable roof.

Ground-level runs

Fences, railings, walkways and bed lines

Your rate per linear foot, ground level

Usually below the roofline rate: no ladder, no fall exposure.

Trees, wreaths and controllers

Trees or columns wrapped

Price per tree or column

Wrapping is priced per piece because height and trunk size decide the time, not the roofline.

Wreaths, garland and bows

Price per hung fixture

Timers, controllers and cord runs

Price per timer or controller

The line most operators forget, then absorb on every callback about lights that did not come on.

Product you supply

Light product, at cost

Leave empty when the customer already owns the lights.

Markup on product

Takedown and storage: the back half of the same sale

These are not add-ons. A seasonal quote that prices neither is a January of unpaid ladder work followed by a garage full of somebody else's product. Price both, or decide knowingly not to.

Takedown, as a share of the install

A starting point, not a market rate: the January visit fits, aims and tests nothing, it only pulls down and coils. Replace it after one measured season.

Off-season storage fee

What you charge to keep the customer's product on your shelf until next November.

Minimum, tax and the margin check

Job minimum

A floor the package never falls below. Leave empty for no minimum.

Tax rate

Sales tax or GST, if you add one. Use your own registered rate: the tool does not assume a jurisdiction.

Crew-hours the whole job takes

Install plus takedown, all hands. Needed for the margin check.

Your cost per crew-hour

Loaded crew cost, wage plus burden. Fill both and the margin block appears; leave either empty and it stays hidden.

Season package before tax

—

Enter a rate per linear foot to build the quote.

Roofline install: —
Trees, wreaths and controllers: —
Takedown visit: —
Season package before tax: —

Export

How this is calculated

The package is a build-up from length and counts you enter. Two things behave deliberately: roofline feet are weighted by the storey they sit on before they meet your rate, and the takedown visit is priced as a share of the install rather than guessed at separately. The 1.25 and 1.55 storey weights are Fieldwynn editorial time-and-access multipliers for lighting work, and they are deliberately not the production factors the gutter cleaning calculator uses for a different job at the same heights, so the two pages are not one rate in two places.

weightedFt = singleFt×1.00 + twoFt×1.25 + threeFt×1.55
roofline   = weightedFt × ratePerFoot × (1 + steepPitch)
ground     = groundFt × groundRate
fixtures   = trees×perTree + wreaths×perWreath + controllers×perController
product    = productCost × (1 + markup)
install    = roofline + ground + fixtures + product
takedown   = install × takedownShare          (seasonal only)
storage    = storageFee                        (seasonal only)
package    = max(install + takedown + storage, jobMinimum)
tax        = package × taxRate
perFoot    = package ÷ (singleFt + twoFt + threeFt + groundFt)
cost       = crewHours × costRate + productAtCost
margin     = (package − cost) ÷ package

Worked example, the one the page ships with. 120 feet of single-storey roofline and 80 feet of two-storey at $4.00 a foot, two wrapped trees at $75, one timer at $50, takedown at a quarter of the install and $50 of storage. The storey weighting turns 200 installed feet into 220 access-weighted feet, so the roofline is $880, the fixtures are $200 and the install is $1,080. Takedown adds $270 and storage $50, for a $1,400 season package, which is $7.00 per linear foot of the 200 feet actually installed. The $4.00 is an operator input, not a market rate: change it and every figure moves.

The storey factors are the only pre-filled multipliers, and they are dimensionless: single storey 1.00, two storey 1.25, three storey or roof-edge 1.55. The reasoning is access, not product: the same foot of roofline is the same length of light and a different job to reach, because a second-storey line means a taller ladder repositioned more often and a third means working from the roof with fall protection and a second set of hands. They are Fieldwynn editorial starting points printed here so you can disagree with them before quoting, not a survey of what anyone charges.

Why takedown and storage are on the same page as the install. A holiday lighting job has a back half that a leaf cleanup or a snow push does not: a January visit to pull everything down, and months of shelf space afterwards if the product is yours to store. Quoting only the November visit is the single most common way this job loses money, so both lines are priced by default and the tool flags a quote that zeroes either one. Switch to a permanent install and both lines are dropped outright rather than silently summed, because a permanently mounted track is not taken down and never comes back to your shelf.

Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent.

Holiday lighting is the Q4 add-on that most lawn, landscape, pressure washing and window cleaning crews sell off a truck they already own, and it is the one most often quoted from a number somebody heard. The calculator above builds the quote the way the job is actually performed: roofline linear feet by storey, ground-level runs, trees and wraps, wreaths and garland, timers and controllers, the product you supply, then the two lines that make Christmas and holiday light installation different from everything else you sell, the January takedown and the storage in between.

No per-foot rate ships on this page, deliberately

Search for a holiday lighting price per linear foot and you will find plenty of them. Follow the citations and they resolve to homeowner cost pages and vendor blogs quoting each other. No regulator, no trade body, no published survey, so under this site’s cite-or-omit rule there is no per-foot figure printed anywhere here and none was made up. Every currency box starts empty.

What the tool supplies instead is structure, and one set of dimensionless factors: the storey access weighting. A foot of roofline is the same length of light at every height and a very different job to reach, so single-storey feet count at 1.00, two-storey at 1.25 and roof-edge work at 1.55 before your rate touches them. Those are Fieldwynn editorial starting points, printed on the page with their reasoning so you can disagree with them before you quote. They are time-and-access multipliers for lighting work specifically, and they are deliberately not the production factors on the gutter cleaning page, which model how fast a different job runs at each height, so the two sets of numbers should never be read as one rate.

The takedown and the storage are the whole margin argument

This is the coupled side effect the calculator refuses to let you miss. Price only the November install and you have quietly committed to a January of ladder work in worse weather for nothing, and to eleven months of shelf space if the strands are yours to store. Both lines are priced by default, the takedown as a share of the install and the storage as a flat fee, and the tool flags a seasonal quote that zeroes either one.

Switching the quote type to permanent lighting drops both lines outright rather than leaving them in at zero, because a permanently mounted track is not taken down and never comes back to your shelf. That is a different sale with a different shape, and it is worth quoting alongside the season package rather than instead of it.

Where the hours and the truck cost come from

The margin check at the bottom needs two numbers this page does not try to guess: the crew-hours the whole job takes, install and takedown together, and what an hour of crew costs you loaded. If the lift, the ladder rack or the trailer is carrying real money, the equipment cost per hour calculator is where that hourly figure is built. And because lighting jobs cluster into a few streets and then scatter, the drive between them belongs in the quote as well: the trip charge and service call calculator prices a truck roll on its own so you can decide whether an outlying house is a job or a favour.

It sits next to the other two things you sell that quarter

Holiday lighting is quoted in the same conversation as the rest of the Q4 round, which is why it prices alongside leaf cleanup and snow removal rather than separately from them. The sequencing matters more than the pricing: the fall and winter service calendar for lawn and landscape crews puts holiday lighting in the September and October selling column against a November installing column, in the same month rows as snow contracts and leaf work. If you are quoting lighting in November you are quoting against your own booked crews.

Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent. Estimate only, not a binding quote, and nothing here is a safe work method for ladder, roof or electrical work.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for Christmas light installation per linear foot?

This page will not hand you a per-foot figure, and that is the point of it. Every circulating number for holiday lighting traces back to homeowner cost pages and vendor blogs quoting each other, with no regulator, trade body or published survey behind any of them, so printing one here would be inventing a market rate. Build the number instead: your rate per foot of single-storey roofline, weighted up for second and third-storey work, plus trees, fixtures, controllers, the takedown visit and the storage. The calculator then reports what your own quote works out to per linear foot, which is the figure worth comparing against your last accepted job.

Why is the price weighted by storey rather than just by length?

Because the length is the same and the job is not. A foot of single-storey eave is ladder work from the ground; the same foot two storeys up is a taller ladder repositioned more often, usually with a second person footing it; higher still it is roof-edge work with fall protection. The calculator applies a visible access factor to each storey band, 1.00, 1.25 and 1.55, before your rate touches it, so 200 feet spread across two storeys prices higher than 200 feet along a bungalow. Those factors are Fieldwynn editorial starting points printed on the page with their reasoning, not a survey of anybody’s prices.

Should takedown be a separate charge or built into the price?

Either, as long as it is in the price. A holiday lighting job has a back half that leaf cleanup and snow work do not: a January visit in worse weather to pull everything down. The calculator prices it as a share of the install, defaulting to a quarter because the takedown fits, aims and tests nothing, and it flags any seasonal quote that sets the share to zero. Whether you show it as its own line on the customer’s invoice or fold it into one season price is a sales decision. Leaving it out of the arithmetic is not.

What should I charge to store the customer’s lights?

Your own number, and the calculator will not invent one, but the question it is really asking is whether you noticed you were doing it. If the product is yours to hold between seasons, it is eleven months of shelf space, handling and the risk of a tangled strand being your fault next November. Enter a flat off-season storage fee and it rides in the package; leave it at zero and the tool says plainly that you are giving it away. A permanent-lighting quote has no storage line at all, because nothing comes back to the shelf.

When should I be selling holiday lighting?

Before you intend to install it. The site’s fall and winter selling calendar puts holiday lighting in the September and October sell column against a November deliver column, which is the same pattern as snow contracts and leaf cleanup: the work you perform this week was sold four to eight weeks ago. Quoting in November means quoting against crews that are already booked, and pricing a job you will install in the dark.

How is a permanent lighting quote different?

Structurally, not cosmetically. Switch the quote type and the takedown visit and the storage fee are dropped from the calculation entirely, because a permanently mounted track is not taken down in January and never comes back to your shelf. What remains is a single install priced by weighted roofline foot, plus the controller and the product. It is a larger one-off number with no annual back half, which is exactly why it sells against a season package rather than alongside one.

How we choose and check our formulas