Why Professional Holiday Lighting Costs What It Does

A professional holiday lighting season is a service, not a box of lights, and the price reflects the whole of it: design time, our own commercial-grade inventory, the insurance that covers a crew on your roof, every repair between installation and New Year, and the January removal that sends the lights back with us rather than into your garage. What you are buying is a whole season handled by somebody else.

That is the answer. What follows is what sits inside it, because the parts people never see are the parts that cost the most.

What are you actually paying someone to take off your hands?

Risk, first. Holiday lighting is ladder work at height, in cold weather, on surfaces that were not designed to be walked on. A two-story roofline or a steep roof pitch is not a Saturday project with a borrowed extension ladder. Insured with $2 million in general liability coverage, and a certificate of insurance is available on request.

Time, second. The whole design is settled before a single clip goes on: reading the architecture from your photos and from satellite and street views, deciding which rooflines will actually read from the street and which will disappear, choosing where the trees belong in the composition, then drawing the scheme on a photo of your property so you approve a picture rather than a paragraph.

And the season itself, third. Installation is a single visit. The service runs from October to January.

Why do the lights themselves cost what they do?

Because they are commercial-grade and they stay in our care.

You lease our lights for the season rather than buying them, and they are custom-fit to your home and your design. That fit is the reason a professional roofline looks like a drawn line instead of a sagging one, and it is only possible because the installer supplies the lights, looks after them and replaces what fails.

Commercial-grade material is built to be installed, maintained and re-fitted season after season rather than opened once and thrown away, and it is held to that standard because we are the ones who look after it. That is a cost you never see on a receipt and see every evening on the elevation.

What does the service cover after install day?

Everything that goes wrong, and the end of the season.

If a bulb, a strand or a timer fails in the middle of December, you tell us and the issue is addressed within 48 business hours. You do not get a ladder out, you do not go looking for a matching replacement, and you do not spend an evening tracing a dead run. One point of contact handles it, and the whole team has your file — the design, the scope, the history — so whoever you reach can get it moving rather than take a message for somebody else.

Removal begins January 2. We take everything down and the lights leave with the crew rather than staying with you. Nothing is coiled into a bin, nothing takes a shelf in your garage, and nothing has to be untangled next October.

What do you get for free that usually is not?

Your colors, every year.

You can change your color scheme every year at no charge, as long as the design itself — what is lit and where — stays the same. Warm white this season, candy cane in red and cool white the next, multicolor the year after that: same scheme on the house, different mood, nothing added to the proposal. The design is the work; the color is a choice, and we treat it like one.

That is a small thing on paper and a large one in practice. The drawing is the work, and it keeps its value season after season while the house in front of it is free to change.

Why does a service like this not publish a price?

Because the work is set by the property, and no two are the same.

A single-story ranch with a clean front roofline and two small trees is a different day's work from a two-story stone elevation with gables, columns, an arched entry and a drive lined with live oaks. Roof pitch, access, power location, the number of elements in the design and how high the crew has to work all move the scope. Pricing is determined by your design and the scope of the property, after a free design consultation, which is why every proposal is written for one house rather than drawn from a chart.

What is fixed is what the price includes: design, lights, installation, in-season care within 48 business hours, and removal beginning January 2. That list does not change with the property.

What should a proposal tell you?

Four things, and none of them is the number at the bottom.

Whose lights they are, and what happens to them in January. Who carries the insurance while somebody is on your roof, and whether you can see proof of it. What happens when a strand fails in the middle of December, and how quickly. And whether you are approving a drawing of your own house or a paragraph describing one.

Ours answers all four, because all four are the service. Ask any proposal the same questions and you will know what you are buying.

Request a design consultation and we will reply within one business day to start your design. If you want to see what the finished work includes first, the residential service page lays out every element we light.