How Much to Charge for Christmas Light Installation, Per Foot
To work out how much to charge for Christmas light installation, turn your truck, ladders, insurance, wages and fuel into a cost per crew hour, measure the house’s run in feet, time how many crew hours your crew takes per 100 feet, add the lights and clips, and divide by one minus your margin. Then price the takedown too, before you hang anything. In the illustrative example below, a 215-foot house takes 3.98 crew hours and $233.50 of lights and prices at $689.45, or $3.21 a foot. The takedown is another $213.79.
There are no going rates here. Every figure belongs to one made-up crew of 2 with one truck, and each one is an input to replace with your own.
The Christmas light pricing formula
cost a crew hour = (truck + gear / seasons it lasts + upkeep + insurance)
/ crew hours in the season
+ wages for the whole crew + fuel
install hours = run in feet / 100 x crew hours per 100 feet + setup
price = (install hours x cost a crew hour + lights and clips)
/ (1 - margin), and never below your minimum
price per foot = price / run in feet
A crew hour is the whole crew working one hour. Margin is profit as a share of the price, which is why the formula divides rather than multiplies.
Step 1: what a crew hour costs
The example crew expects 300 crew hours of work across the season, counting installs, takedowns and service calls, and wants a 30% margin.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Truck cost charged to the season | $2,500 |
| Ladders, lift and tools: $6,000 over 6 seasons | $1,000.00 |
| Upkeep and rentals | $300 |
| Insurance for the season | $1,500 |
| Fixed costs for the season | $5,300.00 |
| Fixed cost per crew hour (300 crew hours) | $17.67 |
| Wages: 2 people at $20.00 | $40.00 |
| Fuel and running cost | $5.00 |
| Cost per crew hour | $62.67 |
| Crew hour price at a 30% margin | $89.52 |
Step 2: the lights and clips for one house
The example house has 140 feet of roofline, 40 feet of ridge, 20 feet of peaks and gables and 15 feet of extra wire to reach the outlet: a 215-foot run. At 12-inch spacing that is one bulb and one clip per foot.
| Item | Working | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Wire | 215 ft x $0.40 | $86.00 |
| Bulbs | 215 x $0.50 | $107.50 |
| Clips | 215 clips, 5 packs of 50 at $8.00 | $40.00 |
| Lights and clips for this house | $233.50 |
That is $1.09 a foot of material. Bulb, wire and clip prices are the example’s; enter what you pay.
Step 3: the install price and the price per foot
The example crew takes 1.5 crew hours per 100 feet, plus 0.75 crew hours to set up, test and drive. Time a job you know to get your own figure; a second story, a steep pitch or a lift changes it.
- Install: 215 / 100 x 1.5 + 0.75 = 3.98 crew hours
- Labor: 3.98 x $62.67 = $249.11
- Cost with lights: $482.61
- Price at a 30% margin: $689.45, or $3.21 a foot
If the customer supplies their own lights, the labor-only figure is $1.66 a foot.
Christmas light installation prices by length
The setup time is the same on every house, so the price per foot falls as the run grows, and on short runs the $300 minimum does the work:
| Run, feet | Crew hours | Materials | Price at margin | Price to charge | Per foot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 | 1.65 | $70.00 | $247.72 | $300.00 (minimum) | $5.00 |
| 100 | 2.25 | $106.00 | $352.87 | $352.87 | $3.53 |
| 215 | 3.98 | $233.50 | $689.45 | $689.45 | $3.21 |
| 350 | 6.00 | $371.00 | $1,067.17 | $1,067.17 | $3.05 |
This is where a single per-foot price goes wrong. Quote the 60-foot house at the example’s $3.21 a foot and it comes to $192.40, below the $300 minimum the trip and setup need. Quote a 350-foot house at the same rate and it is priced above the $3.05 a foot its hours justify. Price from crew hours and both come out right. The same thing happens with pressure washing by the square foot and window cleaning by the pane.
Takedown and storage are priced up front
Taking the lights down took the example crew 60% of the install time: 2.39 crew hours, a $213.79 fee at the same margin. That is 31% of the install price, so the first year with this customer is $903.24 before storage. Quote both in the same message, so the customer never hears about the takedown in January.
Storage is its own fee. A $120-a-month space holding 80 bins costs $18.00 a bin a year. This customer’s 3 bins, with time to label, test and repair them, make a $144.29 storage fee.
Leasing your lights against selling them
Lights lasting 3 seasons can be leased (a share of their cost each season, with margin) or sold to the customer at a 40% markup. With $600 of install and takedown labor each season, a leased season is $711.19, and an owned one costs $926.90 the first year and $600 after. Over 3 seasons the customer pays $2,133.57 leasing and $2,126.90 owning, $6.67 apart. Your profit on the lights is $100.07 leasing and $93.40 selling. The money is close either way; leasing keeps the lights in your bins and the customer coming back.
The insight: the takedown window caps the season
Installs run over a long window; takedowns are squeezed into a short one after the holidays. In the example:
| Installs | Takedowns | |
|---|---|---|
| Days in the window | 40 | 21 |
| Days lost to weather (estimate) | 8 | 4 |
| Crew hours a job, drive included | 4.48 | 2.89 |
| Jobs the window fits | 57 | 47 |
The install window fits 57 jobs, and taking them all down would need 20.6 working days against 17. Only 47 takedowns fit. Book 57 and 10 customers are still waiting for their lights to come down when the window closes. The number of installs you can sell is set by the takedown window, not the install window, so count backward from the takedowns when you set your booking limit.
How these were calculated
Cost a crew hour is (truck + gear / seasons + upkeep + insurance) / crew hours in the season + crew wages + fuel. Materials are wire by the foot, one bulb and one clip per spacing, and clips in whole packs. Install hours are run / 100 x crew hours per 100 feet + setup; price is (labor + materials) / (1 - margin), at least the minimum. Takedown is a share of install hours at the same cost and margin. Storage is rent a year / bins the space holds x this customer’s bins, plus handling time, grossed up by the margin. Capacity divides working crew hours in each window by hours a job with driving. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program, and the two agree to the cent. All inputs, including speeds, light prices and the windows and weather days, are illustrative, not market rates or measured speeds. None of this is financial, legal, tax or insurance advice.
To run this on your own crew, gear, houses and windows, the pack below has the same seven calculators linked together, through to the whole season’s profit and break-even.