How Much to Charge for Christmas Light Installation: A Per-Foot Method
Holiday lighting gets priced once and lived with all season. The numbers you set in October are the numbers every customer sees. Install dates fill up, and a customer comparing companies can only book the ones that have sent a price, so your prices need to be ready before the requests are.
This post shows how to price Christmas light installation with rules instead of gut feel. Every dollar figure below is a labeled hypothetical, so swap in your own numbers.
What changes the price of a Christmas light installation?
Five things move the price. Check them in this order every time, because each one builds on the one before.
- Roofline. The feet of roofline you'll light, not the square feet of the house.
- Height. Upper stories mean longer ladders, slower work and more risk.
- Trees and bushes. Each wrapped piece takes its own time, so it gets its own line.
- Takedown. January is a second trip, so it gets priced now, as its own line.
- The minimum. A small house still costs you the truck, the crew and the setup.
Roofline is the one input you can estimate from a satellite view and a street photo. The other four come from the customer. So ask for the number of stories and the number of trees and bushes to wrap on your quote form, and let the rule read the answers.
How to price Christmas light installation with six quote rules
Write these once, then use them on every lead. Skipping a step is how a Sunday evening quote loses money.
- Measure the roofline. Use a satellite view and a street photo, and add up every run you plan to light. Decide once how you count gables, peaks and dormers, then write that rule down.
- Multiply by one rate per foot. One rate, every time. Consistency is what lets you quote without a site visit.
- Multiply for height. Use a multiplier for two and three stories instead of a flat ladder fee, so a big two-story house pays more than a small one.
- Check the minimum. If the roofline charge lands under your minimum, charge the minimum.
- Add trees and bushes by the piece. Count the pieces, multiply by a rate, and show it as its own line.
- Add takedown as its own line. Show it even if you always include it. The customer sees what they're paying for, and you never forget to charge for the January trip.
Then run one sanity check. Divide the quote by the hours your crew will spend on the install and the takedown, drive time included. If the answer is under your hourly floor, raise the minimum before you touch the foot rate, because small houses are where the money leaks.
Keep the rules in a sheet anyone on the crew can read. A rule you have to remember is a rule you'll skip.
How much should you charge per foot of roofline?
Quote per foot and let the rule do the math. The right rate is yours, not ours, because it depends on your lights, your crew cost, your ladder time and what the next house would pay you for the same day.
Say your rate sheet looks like the one below. These are the starting numbers in the free calculator: made-up examples that show the shape of the rules, not a price to copy.
| Input | If-then rule | Hypothetical charge |
|---|---|---|
| Roofline | Feet of roofline times the rate | $4 per foot |
| Height | Two stories, times 1.2. Three stories, times 1.4. Applies to the roofline charge only | 1.2 or 1.4 |
| Minimum | If the roofline charge is lower, charge this instead | $399 |
| Trees and bushes | Pieces wrapped times the rate | $75 per piece |
| Takedown and storage | Its own flat line | $150 |
Say a one-story house has 150 feet of roofline, two trees to wrap, and takedown included. A hundred and fifty times $4 comes to $600. The house is one story, so there's no height multiplier, and $600 is over the $399 minimum. Add 2 times $75 for the trees, which is $150, and $150 for takedown. The total comes to $900.
Say the same house has two stories. The roofline line is $600 times 1.2, which comes to $720, so the total comes to $1,020.
Say a second house is a small one-story with 80 feet of roofline, no trees, and takedown. Eighty times $4 comes to $320, which is under the $399 minimum, so the roofline line is $399. Add $150 for takedown and the quote is $549. Without the minimum, this house would get the same truck, crew and ladders as a bigger one for $320 of roofline work.
You can run these exact rules in the free Christmas light installation price calculator. It opens on the first example, $900, so type in your own rates and the quote lines update as you go. To see the minimum at work, type 80 into roofline and set trees to 0.
Should takedown be included in the price?
Show it as its own line, even if you include it in every job. The calculator prices the whole season as one quote, so the customer sees one number with its lines underneath. A separate takedown line also lets you change one number if your January costs change, and every future quote updates.
Trees and bushes work the same way. Price them per piece, so a yard with six trees to wrap pays for six, not for two.
What to send a holiday lighting lead
Here's a reply you can copy. Fill in the capitals from your rules, and keep each line separate so the customer can drop one without a re-quote.
Hi NAME, here's your holiday lighting quote for ADDRESS. Roofline lights, NUMBER feet, NUMBER stories: AMOUNT. Trees and bushes wrapped, NUMBER pieces: AMOUNT. Takedown and storage: AMOUNT. Total for the season: AMOUNT. This price holds for NUMBER days. Pick an install time here: BOOKING LINK.
Screen out bad jobs, then quote the rest fast
Not every request should get a price right away. Some conditions change the job so much that no rule can see them. Hold the quote and take a quick look first when:
- The roofline is complicated, and the satellite view and the customer's photos can't show every run.
- The house is taller than the three stories your height rule covers, or a ladder can't reach part of the roofline.
- The customer wants something your rule table has no line for, like a custom design, a lawn display or lights on a fence.
- The trees are too tall for your per-piece price, or you can't tell how many there are from the photos.
- There's no outdoor outlet in reach, or the customer isn't sure where the power is.
- The request is for a date your crew has already filled.
Everything else gets priced by the rules, and speed matters here.
Say a request comes in at 8:15 on a Sunday evening in October for the $900 job above. Suppose you reply Tuesday morning, and the customer already booked whoever answered Sunday night. That's $900 gone.
Say your week brings four requests like it, and all four are answered late. The total comes to four times $900, which is $3,600.
Workely's Price workflow handles the quoting half of this. A lead that fits your rules gets a quote from your own prices, ready with a link to book a time, or sent on its own if you turn on auto-send. A lead that doesn't fit waits for your OK, which is where the hold list above goes. Email follow-ups go out at 1 hour, 1 day and 3 days. You can read how lead capture and qualification works, or how it fits home services crews.
If your crew also clears snow, the same method works there: see how to price snow removal. If you clean gutters before the lights go up, see how much to charge for gutter cleaning.
Your next step
Pick five numbers this week: the rate per foot, the height multipliers, the minimum, the rate per tree and the takedown fee. Then test them in the Christmas light installation calculator on three houses you've already lit, and fix any rule that gives a result you'd hate to quote.
Once you know how much to charge for Christmas light installation as rules, the work left is speed. Workely quotes from your own rules and sends a link to book a time, and email follow-ups go out at 1 hour, 1 day and 3 days. When you're ready, look at Workely plans and pricing.