How much does it cost to install permanent Christmas Lights? Imagine your home bathed in a warm, welcoming glow every evening, or transformed into a dazzling spectacle of color for holidays and special occasions—all at the touch of a button. Permanent smart lighting isn’t just about convenience; it’s about enhancing your home’s curb appeal, creating a magical ambiance, and even increasing its value. And the best part? In Edmonton and the surrounding area, permanent lighting solutions are more affordable than ever before.
So, what’s the cost? In Edmonton and area the short answer is: less than it used to! Colour changing smart lights installed in colour matched aluminum channel on the eaves of a home are more affordable than they’ve ever been before. And a wildly more affordable than they are outside Alberta. While three years ago prices ranged from $23 to $28 per linear foot, competition in the marketplace has done what the market is supposed to and driven down prices while expanding consumer options.
Now pricing tends to hover between $18.50 and $22 per linear foot, plus the cost of a controller. Controllers range between 250 and 500. These are averages across professional installers in the Capital region with some outliers on either side. Lighting the front of the average two story front garage home now costs between $3100 and $4500 plus tax.
If you’d like to get a near instant idea of what lights would cost on your home, try our Whizzy Estimator.
But that’s a pretty big range for a ballpark price. So let’s dive into some of the details of what contractors take into account when pricing a permanent holiday light installation, so you can get a good idea of where your own home would sit.
Table of Contents
Material Considerations for Smart Home Lighting Installations
Linear Feet of Light Required
The single biggest price driver by far is how many feet of light will be installed. In this market, well over 50% of a lighting install invoice goes directly to paying for lights and aluminum channel. This means how much material the job will take is the majority consideration in pricing. It’s easy to underestimate this factor. I sometimes find owners of very simple bungalows are surprised that their lights cost as much as they do. Length of install is king; everything else is margins.
Some Soffit Lighting Installs Will Need Specialty Custom Aluminum Channel
Over 90% of our installs use what we call 3/4 track. It’s a channel shaped like an upside down top hat, that holds the lights 3/4″ below a home’s soffit. This is sufficient to hold all the wiring hidden inside the aluminum, and ensure the lights are visible below the bottom of the fascia. Usually. We install 1000s of feet of this every month, so our supply lines are quick, and our prices benefit from the quantity.
There are several circumstances we encounter that may require a part, or all of an install to be completed with some other profile. With the most common circumstances being:
- No Soffit: There may not be room under overhangs to fit our usual track.
- This can be for an entire home in the case of a flat roof home
- Or just a section, where a bay window comes all the way out to the fascia.
- Low Hanging Fascia Boards: features hanging below the soffit may hide the lights.
- Sloped Soffit: soffit that is slanted will result in lights being pointed in the wrong direction without a specialty track.
- Gable Brackets: Architectural decorations can conceal lights on gables.
Any time we need a custom profile aluminum track, instead of being run through a roll forming machine that can produce it in minutes, it’ll be manually shaped with a sheet metal brake and punched. It takes substantially more labour time to produce these, and custom tracks are typically larger, requiring more aluminum than our most common profile. How much does it cost to install permanent Christmas Lights with specialty tracks? They typically add two to four dollars per foot for the sections of an install that require them, bringing the per foot cost for those sections up between $20 and $26 per foot. Below are some examples of where specialty channel may be necessary.
Low Hanging Fascia Boards
Homes that have Hardi-board fascia, or older homes that would have had exposed wood fascia at one time, often have fascia that hangs well below the soffit.
If the fascia hangs low enough that our usual channel is hidden, we’ll want to install a taller channel that will show the lights.
Low-hanging fascia required a custom track on this project, adding $480 to the overall cost. See how the taller channel ensures the lights are visible?
Insufficient Overhang for Regular Mounting
Our regular channel requires about 2.5″ of horizontal space to mount. That’s not always available.
We really wanted more lights on this home than just the top. The dark grey foam backed EIFS piece provided a line for adding lights, but we didn’t want to interrupt it’s texture, so for $75 we trimmed the top flashing of that piece with a lighting track we could mount on a horizontal surface.
Installation Complexity and Labour Costs
Most homes are not one straight roofline. And that’s good! We at Darren Does That thrive on challenge after all. Installs of the same length can vary greatly in how much labour is required to install them.
Number of Corners and Transitions
Installers can learn to do straight lines well in a couple days. Tight corners and invisible transitions are what take care and skill on the job, to ensure the time required is allocated it’s a good idea to think twice about working with a company that pays subcontractors by the linear foot.
This property in Bonnie Doon, Edmonton, is a small install, but there are a couple notable complexities. There’s only one outlet for the controller, and the brick/stucco siding means we need to get clever to keep our wire transitions invisible. The exposed beams mean that what would other wise be 4 easy sections, is broken into 9 with transition work required between each.
This Oleskiw, Edmonton home despite being over twice as many linear feet has fewer discrete sections than the one from Bonnie Doon. Likely, in terms of labour these two properties would take similar install times.
This gorgeous lighting project is in Griesbach in Edmonton. This property is within 15% of the square footage of the Oleskiw home, but it has over twice as many linear feet of light on the front face, and 3 times as many cuts and transitions. Projects like this are on the higher end of the scale in linear feet costs. They also impress like nothing else when we pack that much light on!
Access Difficulty
When sizing up a Smart Light install, one factor that bears on installation cost is the accessibility of your roofline. A straightforward installation on a single-story home with easy access is a very different scenario than a multi-story house with complex landscaping. Difficult-to-access locations in your proposed lighting project will affect the price you pay.
Lift Requirements
It’s common for companies to charge extra if an installation requires a lift. It’s even worse when companies don’t bring a lift when to do the job safely and well they need one. Companies charge because lift rentals can be expensive. Darren Does That’s taken a different approach. We invested in our own lift because we feel it’s essential to work safely and ensure a high-quality installation.
Put our fancy manlift to work on your pride and joy.
Working from a lift allows us to achieve a superior, more precise installation compared to working from ladders. So for routine accessible high access work you won’t see a line item on our quotes for a tool that’s as necessary as measuring tapes and screw drivers.
If your property requires super compact lifts that can be driven through gates to reach a back yard, expect a big jump in price. There are units under 36″ wide for this type of work but they are not common and they are not cheap.
Height and Roof Safety
Ladders are still necessary on every install though. When we figure out how to suspend ourselves from a drone, we’ll finally be able to do away with them. The taller the ladder required, the slower the installation process. This translates to more labour hours, which in turn affects the overall cost. Beyond just height, other access challenges can alter a projects timeline and cost.
Some houses have areas that must be accessed by stepping on the roof. In these cases temporary fall protection anchors may need to be installed to ensure the safety of our install team. This is a crucial step and will be factored into your cost to install permanent lights.
Landscape Challenges
Finally, consider the specifics of your property. Tight access along the sides of homes, uneven terrain, or obstacles such as pergolas, hot tubs, or dense landscaping all add complexity to the installation process. The presence of these factors will affect the overall cost. If you’re being provided pricing based on remote measure-ups, know that these issues may become a sticking point on install day. Quality installers will ensure the site has been reviewed in person before quoting.
Variations in Lighting Products and Effects on Price
Between various lighting products there are variations on # of LEDs per light, light spacing, size, colour channels and more. In the Edmonton region, the overwhelming majority of smart holiday light installations are done with a triple diode 30mm puck with 9″ spacing between lights as seen in both the Watts Lights and Gemstone brands. Because of this, in this article we’ll stick to factors outside the specific properties of the lights themselves, but in general, the products with fewer diodes per puck cost less. Within the 30mm, triple diode market the big two categories are installers providing Branded lights or Direct Order lights.
Choosing a National Brand or a Direct Order Supplier
There is (unfortunately) no Smart LED manufacturing in North America. Any smart holiday lights you’re considering having installed on your home come from overseas. Two main options exist for the lights themselves: national brands (like Watts Lights and Gemstone) and direct-order brands. Here’s a comparison:”
National Brands:
Pros:
- Reliable Support: Enjoy peace of mind knowing the brand will back your lights, even if your installer goes out of business.
- Quality Products: Established brands have greater leverage with manufacturers, resulting in better quality control.
- Advanced Apps: Larger companies invest more in app development, providing better functionality, security, and updates.
- Certified Installers: Brands often require installer certification, ensuring a higher level of expertise.
Cons:
- Potentially Higher Cost: The added layer of distribution might mean slightly higher initial costs.
Direct Order Brands:
- Pros:
- Potentially Lower Initial Cost: Cutting out the middleman might lead to lower upfront costs.
- Cons:
- Limited Support: If the installer closes, you’re on your own for warranty and support.
- Unproven Quality: Product quality can be inconsistent, and long-term reliability is less certain.
- Basic Apps: App functionality may be limited, and updates less frequent.
- Lack of Certification: Installers may not have the same level of training or oversight.
Time of Year
While originally marketed as permanent Christmas lights, this long term ambient flexible lighting solution is useful year round. Also, the companies that offer this product (including us!) install year round. There’s no denying though, that the amount of interest spikes from October through to Christmas each year, as that’s the season we’re all accustomed to thinking about lights. So if that’s when demand is greatest, you can save a good bundle of coin inquiring about getting lights installed through the rest of the year. Darren Does That has our lowest prices each year from January through to the end of March.
But Some Companies Only Quote on Linear Feet
I’ve spoken with many customers who ask me my linear foot cost specifically because they were quoted a simple linear foot price from other companies, and are looking for comparison. While a simple per-foot price might seem attractive, it can be a red flag. It often means the company is either passing hidden costs onto subcontractors (leading to rushed or poor-quality work) or will surprise you with extra charges later.
They’re Passing the Cost of Complications On to Subcontractors
Many lighting companies market the lights, get contracts signed, then hire subcontractors to complete installations, and many of these pay a flat rate per foot to their subs regardless of the complexity of the job. This allows a lighting company to stabilize their labour costs and so quote a simple per foot price on houses of all kinds. This can produce terribly unprofitable situations for the subcontractor installers though, who have no choice to charge more for a job that will take longer than the simple length of lights to be installed accounts for. This is a recipe for disgruntled workers and rushed installations.
They’re Pricing for Complexity in Surprise Charges
There may be a flat rate per foot on you quote, but you may also see additional line items for cuts, wastage, etc. These extra charges that show up on a quote are a way a flat rate can be communicated, but complexity incorporated into the price anyways, and often comes as a surprise late in the process.
Conclusions
So there’s a lot that ought to be considered to determine the cost to install permanent lights on a given home! Job size, complexity of install, difficulty of access, the installer’s unique supply chain, and the time of year you’re seeking a quote. Hopefully I’ve provided you with tools to assess your own home and identify if your property is going to be priced on the higher end or lower end for a given length of lights required.
Learn How Much Does it Cost to Install Permanent Christmas Lights on Your Home, Right Now!
Looking for that ballpark price? Try the super simple form below to get an idea of pricing for your smart soffit light installation.
How Much Does it Cost to Install Permanent Christmas Lights in Other Locations?
Alberta appears to be unique in the low prices charged for Smart Soffit Light installations here. Perhaps it’s our unique Alberta resourcefulness. It may have to do with smart lighting being available longer here than elswhere. Last I checked, other parts of Canada averaged $24/$25 per linear foot, and American location prices were higher still.
Can the Cost of a Smart Soffit Light Installation be Lowered With Customer Supplied Labour or Materials?
Unfortunately no. When installation companies are calculating how much does it cost to install permanent Christmas lights, they’re taking into consideration a ready supply of materials they know thoroughly, and a team that is practiced at working safely and efficiently. Customer product and help creates unpredictability that can often make jobs more difficult than they would be otherwise.
How Much Does it Cost to Install Permanent Christmas Lights if I Can Pay Cash?
We all know in certain places and certain times you can get big discounts for paying cash, especially if you don’t care if you get a receipt. Darren Does That doesn’t take cash under the table payment, and it’s not in the customer’s interests to do a deal without documentation. Smart Lights typically come with long warranties, and if you don’t have paper work, you won’t get the warranty.
Cash is still valuable though as it saves installers the credit card vendor fees which can be over 3% of the cost of a job, so there may be some room to move a price on the margins if you propose to pay cash instead of credit card.
