How to Price Permanent Christmas Lights Per Foot in 2026

Permanent lighting is priced per linear foot of lit roofline, with the controller, the jumps and the peaks broken out as their own lines. The published installed ranges in 2026 are $20 to $40 per foot on HomeGuide, $18 to $35 on Trimlight's pricing page, $25 to $35 plus a $650 to $850 controller on JellyFish's, and $22.50 at one Gemstone dealer. GlowBid's default track line is $25 per foot of roofline and ridge line, $28 on peaks with a 15% pitch premium, $12 per unlit foot of jump, 10% per extra storey and a $250 Wi-Fi controller, with a $1,500 minimum and a 30% deposit. Those are defaults you replace with your own costs. Below is the method, the track versus no-track difference, kits versus per foot, and a two-storey quote that comes to $5,687.

Key numbers

The range is wide for three reasons. Region: labour, insurance and shipping differ by state and province, which is Trimlight's own list of cost drivers. Storeys and pitch: a bungalow and a three-storey with four gables are not the same feet. Product: a track system with an aluminum channel costs more per foot in materials and time than a no-track system clipped to the fascia, and colour-changing nodes cost more than white. Carry both product lines so the quote says which one the customer is buying.

Track versus no-track

A track system runs an aluminum channel along the roofline and the nodes sit in it. It hides the wire, it survives a Canadian winter, and it takes longer to install because the channel is cut, mitred and screwed before a single node goes in. A no-track system clips the light line directly to the fascia or the drip edge. It is faster, cheaper in materials, and the wire is visible in daylight on light-coloured trim.

Price them as two product lines with their own rates. GlowBid's defaults are $25 per foot for track and $20 for no-track on roofline and ridge line, $28 and $23 on peaks, $12 and $10 on jumps. The premiums, add-ons, minimum and deposit are shared. Quote the same house both ways and the customer sees the difference in one number; on the worked example below, no-track comes to $4,708 against $5,687 for track.

The per-foot base by run type

Roofline. The horizontal eave runs, including the returns around each corner. Default: $25 (track) or $20 (no-track).

Ridge line. The top edge of a gable. More permanent customers want it lit than seasonal ones, because the nodes are there all year. Priced at the roofline rate by default; if your ridge work means a roof walk, raise it.

Peak. The two sloped edges of a gable. Higher base rate plus the pitch premium. Default: $28 plus 15%, so $32.20 effective per foot on track.

Ground and trees. Rare on permanent, but a lit pergola happens. Add the run type with a rate, or set trees to a flat price each.

Jump. The unlit cable between lit runs. Low per-foot rate on the footage, plus a flat per jump if you want one. Default: $12 per foot (track), $0 flat.

Flat premiums per jump and per peak

Per-foot rates cover feet. They do not cover what happens at the ends of runs: a connector, a drip loop, the apex mitre, the extra ladder move around a gable. GlowBid has two flat premiums for this, a dollar amount per jump and per peak, counted from the drawing. Both default to $0. We set ours to $25 per jump and $40 per peak, about what the corner pieces and the minutes cost us, and together they add $235 to the worked example. The quote shows the count, so the customer sees three jumps and four peaks rather than a mystery number.

Controllers and transformers as line items

The controller is never buried in the per-foot rate. JellyFish's own pricing page lists it separately at $650 to $850 above the $25 to $35 per foot, and Brightly's cost breakdown puts controller and power supply at about 10% of a job. On the GlowBid default card the Wi-Fi controller is a $250 add-on with a quantity; a long house that needs a second zone gets a second unit, not a bump in the per-foot rate. Add your transformer or power supply as its own add-on too (we carry one at $95). The customer can see what the box costs, and you can change controller brands without touching your footage rates.

Storeys

Mark each run with its storey count as you draw it. The default premium is 10% per storey above the first, applied to that run's base price only. A two-storey house with a one-storey garage eave gets the premium on the upper runs and not on the garage. If your crew works off a lift for anything above two storeys, set a higher number; the point is that the premium follows the run, not the address.

Kits versus per foot

Dealers who buy product in fixed lengths often quote in kits: 100 ft, 150 ft, 200 ft, each at a price. GlowBid supports that as a pricing mode per product line. You define the kits, and the engine picks the cheapest set whose footage covers the lit footage, rounded up to whole feet, with ties going to fewer kits. Jumps are not lit, so they never consume kit footage. Trees at a flat price sit outside the kit as their own lines. The peak and storey premiums still apply, to the share of the kit price that covers peak and upper-storey footage, so a steep two-storey is not priced like a bungalow because it fit in a 200 ft kit.

The catch is rounding. A house with 170 lit feet buys the 200 ft kit. With example kits of $2,900 for 100 ft, $4,100 for 150 ft and $5,300 for 200 ft, the worked house below prices at $5,300 for the kit, $224.47 pitch premium on the peak share, $380.35 storey premium on the upper-storey share, $235 in flat jump and peak premiums and $345 of add-ons, $6,484.82 in all, against $5,687 per foot. Per foot is fairer to the customer and simpler to explain; kits are simpler to buy. Pick one per product line and say on the quote which it is.

Worked example: the same two-storey in Barrhaven, permanent track

The house from the seasonal pricing article: two-storey, single-storey garage bump-out, two front gables, front elevation only, measured from a photo with the 16 ft garage door as the reference. Track line. Every per-foot rate and percentage is the GlowBid default; the $25 per jump, $40 per peak and $95 transformer are our own settings, marked as such.

Lit footage is 170 ft, so the materials list with the 10% buffer calls for 187 ft of channel and light line and about 18 ft of jump cable. The all-in price works out to $33.45 per lit foot, inside HomeGuide's $20 to $40, at the top of Trimlight's $18 to $35, and inside JellyFish's $25 to $35 once their controller is added. Trimlight's own front-only examples run $2,500 to $6,800, and this one lands in the upper half because of four peaks on the second storey. Tax is zero on the default card; set your rate and label once.

The lease versus buy conversation at the kitchen table

Every permanent quote gets the same question: "Why would I pay $5,687 when you did the neighbour's for a couple of thousand?" Answer it with three numbers side by side.

Buy permanent. $5,687 once, 30% at signing, lights on the house every night of the year, no ladder ever again. Trimlight's blog claims break-even in two to four years against repeated seasonal installs; check it against your own two numbers rather than theirs.

Seasonal, every year. The same roofline in C9 on the seasonal card prices at $1,684.20 per season including the timer (the roofline, peaks and jumps from the seasonal article, without the walkway and tree). HomeGuide's published range for a basic seasonal roofline is $250 to $1,500 and $750 to $5,000 for a full package. Three seasons is $5,052.60; four is $6,736.80. The crossover is between the third and fourth season, before you count the product you have to replace.

Lease seasonal. For the customer who wants the look without the capital: a one, three or five year seasonal lease with the product included, a per-season price (flat, declining toward a buyout, or with an escalator), takedown and storage in or out, and an end-of-term choice of return, renew or buy. GlowBid writes that agreement from a clause library, and a signed lease creates each season's install job, takedown job and renewal touchpoint on its own.

Say all three plainly and let them choose. The homeowners who pick permanent did the arithmetic themselves at the table.

Dealer margin context

No manufacturer publishes dealer cost, so work from the gaps that are public and treat them as directional, not as anyone's margin.

• HomeGuide lists DIY permanent kits at $8 to $20 per foot against $20 to $40 per foot installed.
• EverLights' own page prices a colour-changing DIY bundle at $1,600 for 100 ft, $2,100 for 150 ft and $2,700 for 200 ft, and a classic white bundle at $750, $1,000 and $1,500. That is $13.50 to $16 per foot of colour-changing material at retail.
• A DFW dealer comparison lists a 50 ft Oelo DIY kit at $1,340 against $2,000 installed, and installed ranges of $35 to $40 per foot for Oelo, $25 to $35 for Trimlight, $28 to $35 for JellyFish and $22 to $25 for Gemstone.
• Brightly's breakdown of an installed job: about 40% LEDs and wiring, 20% channel and mounting, 10% controller and power supply, 30% labour.
• JellyFish's controller alone is $650 to $850 at corporate locations, which is why it must be its own line.

Put your real product cost per foot, controller cost and feet per crew hour on the rate card, and the margin on every quote is visible before you send it. We could not load Oelo's own pricing pages while writing this, so the Oelo figures are from a dealer's comparison, not from Oelo.

Common mistakes

• Burying the controller in the per-foot rate. The customer cannot compare, and a two-zone house loses money.
• One rate for track and no-track. Different materials, different hours, two product lines.
• Jumps as lit footage. Channel and nodes get ordered for cable that carries neither.
• Peaks at the roofline rate. The apex mitres and the ladder moves are where a permanent install goes over on hours.
• Storey premium on the garage eave. Follow the run, not the address.
• Quoting a kit price and then charging for the overage. Kits round up; say so before the customer signs.
• No buffer on the channel order. Ten percent, on the order, never on the price. Photo footage is confirmed on site.
• Skipping the lease option. A "no" to $5,687 is often a "yes" to a three-season lease.

How the rate card turns the drawing into the price

Everything above is a field on one rate card: product lines with per-foot rates by run type, the pitch, storey and rush percentages, flat per-jump and per-peak amounts, add-ons with unit prices, pricing mode per line, the minimum ticket, deposit percent, tax and the materials buffer. Draw the runs on your own photo of the house, mark the storeys, and the footage, the price and the materials list all come from the same geometry. The quote shows the line items with the measurement source and a note that photo footage is confirmed on site, the customer signs and pays the deposit on one screen, and the rates that produced the price are stored with the quote for as long as the house has lights on it.