How to price Christmas light installation per foot

1. Material cost per foot

Material cost is the part of a bid you can calculate exactly. At 12 in. spacing, one foot of C9 roofline is one foot of socket wire, one bulb and about one clip.

Built from bulk parts at Christmas Light Supplier prices: a 1,000 ft. C9 socket spool at 12 in. spacing is $275, 1,000 bulbs is forty 25-packs of C9 LED bulbs at $19.95 ($798), and a 1,000-count case of C9 O clips is $269. That's $1,342 for 1,000 ft., or about $1.34 per foot before plugs.

Pre-packaged: the C9 1,000 ft. 12 in. commercial installation kit is $1,605.10, about $1.61 per foot, and includes the spool, 1,000 LED C9 bulbs, 800 O clips, 200 8 in. stakes, 100 male plugs, 100 female plugs and 250 ft. of zip cord. The kit adds stakes, plugs and cord, so it covers ground runs and terminations as well as the roofline.

2. Labor per foot

Labor depends on the roof more than the footage. Track your own crew hours per 100 ft. by job type (single-story gutter line, two-story, steep pitch, ridge lines) for a season, and bid from those numbers rather than a single average.

Remember that labor includes more than the install: the design walk, loading the van, drive time, testing, service calls during the season and take-down. Take-down and packing usually run a meaningful share of install time and belong in the same bid.

3. Overhead

Overhead is everything that doesn't go on the roof: vehicle and fuel, ladders and safety gear, insurance, storage space, software, marketing and the owner's time on estimates. Add up a season's overhead, divide by the total linear feet you expect to install, and you have an overhead cost per foot to add to every bid.

4. Lease vs. sell pricing

Many installers own the lights and lease the display to the customer each season, taking everything down and storing it until next year. Under a lease model, material cost is spread over the seasons the product is used. At $1.34 per foot and three seasons of use, the material share is about $0.45 per foot per season, plus the cost of replacing bulbs, clips and plugs lost to breakage each year.

If the customer buys the lights outright, charge the full material cost in the first season, and price later seasons as labor and service only.

5. Margin and minimums

Add your margin on top of material, labor and overhead, not on material alone. Set a minimum job charge so small rooflines still cover the fixed cost of rolling a truck: drive time, setup, and the design and testing work that doesn't shrink with the footage.

Price add-ons such as trees, wreaths, garlands and ground stakes separately so the roofline price per foot stays comparable from job to job.

Worked bid: 300 ft. residential roofline

The numbers below are an example. Replace labor, overhead and margin with your own.

Material (lease model, three seasons): 300 ft. × $0.45 = $135.

Labor: 300 ft. at your crew's measured hours per 100 ft. for that roof type × your loaded hourly rate, for install plus take-down.

Overhead: 300 ft. × your overhead per foot.

Margin: your target margin on the total of the three.

Divide the final number by 300 to get the per-foot price you quote, and check it against your minimum job charge.

Keeping material cost down

Material is the one line in the bid set by your supplier, not your crew. Christmas Light Supplier lists wholesale pricing on every item with no account, application or order minimum, and ships every order free the same day it's placed, so the price in the cart is the cost you bid against, with no shipping line to add.