Chicago Christmas Light Installation Pricing Per Foot (USD)

What do Chicago installers charge for seasonal lights?#

$350 to $3,495 depending on who owns the lights and how much of the house is lit, and the two ends of that range are both real businesses on the same city.

Labour-first, north side. EveryEdge publishes the most granular price list in the market: Basic roofline only from $350, Standard from $450, Premium full front from $550 with lights included; labour only on the customer's strings from $250, $350 or $440 per front; takedown plus $140; a second storey plus $120; a third plus $200 or $250; and an hourly rate of $149 for the first hour with two installers and $120 an hour after two hours. That is a bungalow business, priced for a bungalow.

Package, suburbs. Ware Landscaping in Naperville sells three packages with company-owned lights on a three-year contract with the price locked: $2,000 a year for 150 ft of C9 roofline, 800 mini lights on shrubs, LED garland and a wreath and 60 ft of stake lighting; $2,495 adds 1,000 minis in a tree; $3,495 adds a 120 ft ridge line, two wreaths and a 1,200-light tree. Holiday Prestige in Wheaton starts at $799, $1,499 and $2,499 a season.

Year one buys the lights. Shack Shine Naperville starts around $1,100 with custom-cut strings the customer keeps, then 45 to 55 percent of that for install and takedown in later years.

Where most homes land. Frosty's puts a modest single-storey at $1,000 to $1,800, most North Shore homes at $1,800 to $5,000 and estates at $5,000 to $20,000 and up. Light Up Your Holidays says most residential projects fall between $2,800 and $7,500 and up, deposit required, and tells customers to book by August or September.

For the per-foot method that turns any of those into a rate card, start with the seasonal pricing guide; the lease-versus-buy math between Ware's model and Shack Shine's is on the lease versus buy page.

What is the per-foot rate in Chicago?#

Nobody local publishes a clean seasonal one, so work it back. Ware's $2,000 package carries 150 ft of C9 roofline plus roughly 800 minis, garland, a wreath and 60 ft of stake lights; if the accents are worth about $600 of it (my split, not theirs), the roofline is near $9 a foot with the lights, service and takedown inside. EveryEdge's $350 roofline-only front on a typical 60 ft bungalow face is under $6 a foot with lights, and $250 labour only is about $4. ProMatcher's Chicago report, an aggregator, puts a typical two-storey hang of the owner's lights at $318.63 with a $178.88 to $458.38 range and $85 to $120 an hour.

So the Chicago band is roughly $4 labour-only to $9 full-service per foot of roofline, which straddles GlowBid's $8 default. Permanent is simpler: Brighthouse says JellyFish typically costs $25 to $35 a foot installed plus $650 for the controller, half down to schedule. Roof Lites in Park Ridge says $4,000 to $12,000 for most Chicagoland homes and puts the break-even against a $1,500 a year seasonal package at three to four seasons.

Is Christmas light installation taxable in Illinois?#

No on the service, yes on goods you sell, and use tax on goods you keep. The Illinois Department of Revenue says plainly that Illinois does not tax sales of service, and that labour charges contracted for separately from the selling price of tangible property are not taxable. A contractor is the end user of items incorporated into real estate and pays use tax on cost.

Two things follow. If you keep the lights (Ware's model), your invoice carries no sales tax and you pay use tax on the strings and clips when you buy them. If you sell the lights in year one (Shack Shine's model), the goods line is taxable at the combined rate, which in Chicago is 10.5 percent since August 1, 2026: 6.25 state, 1.75 Cook County, 1.25 city and 1.25 RTA, after the RTA rate rose 0.25 points in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will (Avalara's Chicago page shows the split). Split product and labour lines on the quote, and confirm your own setup with your accountant.

When is the Chicago season?#

Early November through Thanksgiving for installs, mid-January for takedown, with the weather closing in from both ends. O'Hare's normal first freeze is October 19. The normal first measurable snow is November 18 and the first inch December 7, with the last measurable snow April 2. The 1991 to 2020 normals run November at a 48.4 high and 34.1 low with 1.8 inches of snow, December 36.6 and 24.4 with 7.6 inches, January 31.6 and 18.8 with 11.3 inches, and 38.4 inches for the year.

Ware publishes the window most of the market works: install early November through Thanksgiving, takedown the second to third week of January. Frosty's maintains through Christmas Eve. Municipal deadlines are thin: Hanover Park requires decorations down within 90 days of the holiday, and I could not find a City of Chicago deadline. HOAs in the western suburbs will have their own.

What do lake-effect snow and January do to the price?#

They set the premiums and the clauses. Four Chicago realities for the rate card:

• Lake-effect in November. The Illinois State Climatologist notes winter precipitation is enhanced by lake-effect snow, and on November 9 to 10, 2025 about a foot fell locally while O'Hare saw 1.7 inches. Your Thursday install in Evanston can be under a foot of snow while Naperville is dry. Price a rain-date visit into November.
• Takedown in an 11-inch January. Ware says second to third week of January; the normals say 11.3 inches of snow that month. A window with "weather permitting" beats a date, and our takedown pricing page shows how to price the return trip.
• Storeys. EveryEdge charges $120 for a second storey and $200 to $250 for a third, which is the cleanest published storey premium I have seen. GlowBid's default is 10 percent per storey on the runs up there; either way, make it a line the customer can see.
• Cold-weather installs after Thanksgiving. Brittle clips, gloves off to place them, dark at 4:30. A rush premium of 20 percent (the GlowBid default) after your cut-off date is how the late bookings pay for themselves.
• Material waste. Cold cuts and snapped clips mean more scrap. A 10 percent materials buffer, shown as the installer's choice, covers it.

A worked example: a Naperville two-storey on GlowBid's default C9 card#

A two-storey colonial with a two-car garage under a front gable, one more front gable, a walkway and a maple in the front yard. Measured from the homeowner's photo with the 16 ft garage door as the reference: 40 ft of roofline on the garage and porch, 90 ft on the upper storey, four peak runs of 11 ft, two jumps totalling 10 ft, 30 ft of walkway and a 60 ft tree wrap. Every rate is the GlowBid default on the Seasonal C9 line; installers set their own.

Lit footage is 264 ft; with the 10 percent buffer the materials list says 290.4 ft of cord. The house-only part (roofline, peaks, jumps: $1,647) is $9.47 per foot of roofline and peak, a touch above the $9 I worked back from Ware's package and well above EveryEdge, because this house has two storeys and four peaks and the Ware package is priced for 150 ft of flat roofline. The whole ticket, $2,202, sits between Ware's $2,000 and $2,495 packages and inside Frosty's $1,800 to $5,000. Draw your own house in the free roofline tool and the footage is there in two minutes; it is an estimate confirmed on site, and the quote says so.

Setting a Chicago rate card#

Five settings that make a card Chicago-ready:

1. Tax: zero on labour, 10.5 on goods you sell. Set the tax line for the product line that sells strings and leave it at zero for service. Label it "Illinois sales tax" so the customer sees why one line carries it and another does not.
2. Storeys as a visible premium. The market already publishes $120 for a second storey. A percent per storey on the upper runs does the same job and scales with the house.
3. Ridge line as its own run. Ware's top package adds 120 ft of ridge. Price it at the roofline rate and let the drawing count it.
4. Three-year lock as an agreement type. Ware locks the price for three years. GlowBid's multi-year seasonal lease does the same with a flat schedule; the lease versus buy page has the crossover.
5. Minimum job set for the drive. Park Ridge to Naperville is an hour in November. Ours is $1,500 by default; a bungalow business on the north side sets it lower and says so.

GlowBid bills in US dollars; the rate card holds whatever numbers you type. Founding pricing is on the pricing page.

Mistakes to avoid pricing in Chicago#

• Quoting a bungalow with the colonial number. A 60 ft bungalow face at the blended $9.47 is $568; on the card it is $480 of plain roofline with no storey or peak premium, and EveryEdge will do it for $350. Price the footage and the storeys, not an average.
• Comparing a labour-only price to a full-service one. $250 to hang the customer's strings and $2,000 for company-owned lights with a three-year lock are different products. Say which one the quote is.
• Charging sales tax on the service. Illinois does not tax it. A 10.5 percent line on a $2,202 labour quote is $231.21 the customer should not pay and a refund you will be issuing in January.
• Not charging use tax on your own stock. You are the end user of the strings you keep. Budget it into the per-foot rate.
• A fixed takedown date in an 11-inch January. Window, weather clause, and a return-trip price for the customer who wants it down the day after New Year's.
• Booking the whole North Shore into one November week with no weather day. On November 9 to 10, 2025 about a foot fell locally while O'Hare saw 1.7 inches. Keep a rain date, and put the lakefront jobs in late October when the freeze has come but the snow has not.