Best Christmas Light Design Software (7 Tools Compared)

The two tests I run on any design tool#

A render is not a bill of materials. The mockup's job is to sell the job, and every tool in the table can do that. The quote's job is to tell you how many feet of track, how many nodes, how many jumps and what it costs. An AI render places lights where the model thinks the roofline is; it does not know whether that is 120 ft or 160 ft. A drawn run on a scaled photo is a line with a length, so it can carry footage, and footage times a rate card is a price. If the tool makes you measure again after the picture, the picture is a brochure.

Whose photo is under the lights. Google's Maps Platform terms, section 3.2.3, say customers will not store or rehost Street View images and will not trace building outlines from the satellite base map. A mockup drawn on a Street View image is stored, shared with a homeowner and, in some tools, measured. I designed GlowBid so that Street View is a live preview to recognise the house and nothing more; the drawing happens on a photo the installer or homeowner owns. Our Street View rules page has the plain-language version.

Now the seven, in the order I would recommend them to a shop that only needs the picture.

Strandr#

$197 a year, 7-day trial, 30-day money-back on the home page. Upload a photo, drag lights along the roofline, pick colours, export a clean image. Strandr claims 1,700+ active contractors and designs in under two minutes, and bundles a free measuring tool, Inchr, which it values at $197 a year. It says it designs permanent installations as well as seasonal. Its own comparison post lists what it does not do: no built-in CRM or invoicing, no offline mode, no phone support. The measuring happens in a different tool from the drawing, so the footage is re-typed into whatever you quote with. Best pure mockup for the money. Full head-to-head at Strandr alternative.

LightMaster#

Four tiers on the pricing page: Free with a lighter mockup tool, Lite at $24.99 a month or $187 a year with the full AI mockup suite, QuickMeasure and a CRM, Standard at $79.99 a month adding e-signature and payments, Professional at $99.99 a month adding routes, crews and QuickBooks. Seven days of Professional free, no card. The mockup page describes an AI-assisted mode that turns a daytime photo to dusk and places lights automatically, with manual bulb-by-bulb editing, and AI credits metered monthly with purchasable packs. It is the most photo-real render in the list and the most complete holiday product. The render and the measurement are separate features, and the price is entered against the measurement rather than derived from the drawing. Our comparison is at LightMaster alternative.

LightQuoter#

Free with all features, paid for by a 2 percent platform fee on Stripe payments on top of Stripe's 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, or $497 a year for a 0 percent fee. The home page says you draw lights directly on Street View photos, toggle day and night, add wreaths, garlands and tree wraps, and trace the roofline on satellite with automatic pitch adjustment. The quote does price per foot from that trace, which is closer to what we do than anyone else here. The photo under the lights is Google's, and so is the roofline you traced, which is the second test. Their design software post is honest about the mockup being a sales tool; it does not mention the imagery terms. Permanent lighting has its own quoting page, with track priced per foot and controllers and transformers as line items; jumps and no-track systems are not mentioned on it. Details at LightQuoter alternative.

Holiday Home Concepts#

Two plans on the pricing page: Christmas Lights at $129 a month, or $90 a month billed $1,080 on a 12-month term; Christmas Lights and Permanent Lights at $169 a month, or $130 a month billed $1,560 for 12 months. 7-day trial. Both plans list the visual editor, unlimited projects, background replacement, a measuring tool and price calculator, and a customisable proposal page; the higher plan adds permanent lights and animated previews. HHC is the only design-first tool here that measures and prices in the same product, which passes the first test. It is optimised for desktop, laptop and tablet with limited phone functionality, and there is no e-signature or payment step shown. At $1,080 to $2,028 a year it is also the most expensive. Three-way comparison at Holiday Home Concepts alternative.

Jolly Lights#

Free on the App Store with $1.99 in-app packs, from Wrinkle-free Games. Place strands on a photo, set bulb size, colour and spacing, animate, export. Jolly Lights Professional adds warm-white options, greenery, wreaths and a catalogue editor for $29.99 a month or $149.99 a year All-Access, version 3.0 dated September 19, 2025. Apple devices only. It is a sketch tool: no measuring, no quoting, no permanent mode, and the strand you place is a picture of bulbs, not a length. For a first-season installer on an iPad it is a fine way to show a homeowner the idea.

Permr#

permr.io is a permanent-lighting design tool for iPhone, Android, iPad and desktop that promises designs in under two minutes and "3x more" closed jobs. The page is a sign-up form; there is no price, no feature list beyond the visual and no mention of measurement or quoting. Permr sits in the same family as Strandr and Inchr. Worth a look if it launches with a price; until then, not shown is the answer to every column.

GlowBid#

$299 a year for Core at the founding price ($499 regular, $69 a month), Pro $499 founding, Ultimate $699 founding, 7-day trial with no card, 30-day money-back, 100 founding places, the full product opening November 1, 2026. Details on the pricing page.

The mockup is the drawn runs lit on your photo. You type the address, see a live Street View preview to recognise the house, then upload the photo you or the homeowner took and set the scale from a garage door. Draw the runs by type: roofline, ridge line, peak, jump, ground, tree. Each run is a length with a source tag and a confidence level, and a run angled away from the camera gets a foreshortening warning. Because the rate card is applied to that geometry as you draw, the picture, the footage, the materials and the price are one object; move a run and all four change. The quote PDF carries the drawing, footage by run and line items; the homeowner signs on their phone and pays the deposit through Stripe. Permanent is native: track and no-track are product lines with their own per-foot rates, flat per-jump and per-peak charges and a controller add-on.

What it is not. There is no AI photo-real render; the lit preview shows the homeowner the runs on their own house, but it is not LightMaster's dusk picture. It is new, and nobody has run a November on it yet. Billing is USD at launch.

What the drawing gives you that the render does not: a worked example#

A two-storey with 112 ft of front roofline, two gables, two jumps and a 30 ft walkway, drawn as a seasonal C9 job. In a mockup-only tool the output is the picture; the footage is whatever you measured separately. On the GlowBid canvas the picture is the same drawing that produces this table, priced on GlowBid's default C9 seasonal card (installers set their own; these are the starter numbers a new account opens with):

Move a peak run and the picture, the footage, the materials and the price all change together. The quote PDF carries the drawing and that table, with the note that photo measurements are estimates confirmed on site. You can price this house in the free tool and read the footage by run today; the rate card and the PDF are in the full product.

Three differences that decide it#

1. Where the footage comes from. Strandr, Jolly Lights and Permr do not produce footage. LightMaster and LightQuoter measure in a separate step. HHC and GlowBid measure on the drawing. In the eight Ottawa permanent quotes Right Light published, four installers measured the same house at 165 to 209 ft, a 27 percent spread before anyone talked price. A mockup that carries its own footage closes that gap.
2. Whose imagery you are drawing on. LightQuoter draws on Street View and traces satellite. Everyone else draws on your photo. The Street View rules apply to one tool in this table.
3. What happens after the homeowner says yes. Strandr, Jolly Lights, Permr and HHC hand you a picture, or a picture and a proposal, and you sign and collect elsewhere. LightMaster from Standard, LightQuoter and GlowBid carry the job to a signature and a deposit.

When to choose them#

Strandr if you already quote and collect in a tool you like and you lose jobs at the picture. $197 a year is cheap for a better picture.

LightMaster if you want the most photo-real render and a holiday CRM under one login, and you are happy entering the measurement separately.

LightQuoter if you are a first-season seasonal shop, you collect most deposits by card, and you have read the imagery terms and made your own call.

Holiday Home Concepts if you design on a desktop, price from the drawing and want animated previews, and $1,080 to $2,028 a year fits.

Jolly Lights if you need a free sketch on an iPad today.

GlowBid if you install permanent lighting, sell multi-year leases, or are tired of re-typing footage between apps. Draw one house in the free roofline tool and compare the footage against your tape before you decide.

Moving your mockups over#

Your photos are yours in every tool above, so migration is a re-draw, not an import. Download the house photos you took from the old tool or your camera roll, open the free tool, set the scale from the garage door, and draw the runs. Ten minutes a house for a typical two-storey; an hour to enter your rate card once. There is no importer from Strandr, LightMaster, LightQuoter, HHC or Jolly Lights, and I would rather say that than promise one. Old mockups sent to homeowners stay valid as pictures; the new one carries the footage and the quote.

Mistakes when choosing design tools#

• Buying the prettiest render and pricing from a guess. The picture closes the job, and the truck goes back for track when the footage runs short.
• Drawing on a Street View image without checking its date. Street View can be years old; a new porch roof or a removed tree is not in the picture.
• Measuring in one app and typing into another. Every re-type is a place to drop a peak.
• Paying monthly for a tool you use nine weeks a year. Check the annual price and the cancellation terms.
• Sending the homeowner the mockup without the disclaimer that photo measurements are estimates confirmed on site. The picture is a promise; make it the right one.

The roundup across the whole workflow, CRM and job management included, is at best Christmas light installation software.