← Holiday Light Bid Calculator
This calculator vs. a flat $3/LF Christmas light special
“$3 a lineal foot to hang Christmas lights” is not a price for a holiday lighting install — it is a price for one specific run, quietly applied to every eave the truck pulls up to.
What a flat $3/LF special is
A flat per-foot special is the fastest way to quote: one headline number on a postcard, a Facebook ad, or a yard sign, read off and repeated. Owners shop it because it is easy to compare between bids, and it is the number a homeowner holding a competitor's flyer will ask you to match on their own house.
The number behind it was set for one job — usually a ground-reachable 1-story ranch, hang-only on customer-owned C9, no January take-down trip, no storage — and then reused for every roofline afterward, whether or not the next house looks anything like a hang-only ranch.
What this calculator is
This page keeps no account and sends nothing to a server. You enter the eave lineal feet, the scope — hang-only, hang-and-takedown, or full-service storage — stories, light type, peaks, tree wraps, bush nets, column wraps, a timer, a steep pitch, and travel miles, plus your loaded labor and overhead. It prices the scope, the story access, and every extra separately, and returns a walk-away price and an extra-work share below which the job loses money — for this house, not a generic one.
| What a flat $3/LF special does | What this calculator does instead |
|---|---|
| Charges the same per-foot number whether the job is hang-only on a 1-story ranch or full-service on a 2-story Victorian with icicle lights, take-down, and storage. | Prices the scope from the entered hang, take-down, and storage selection, so the two jobs above come out at different numbers instead of one. |
| Has no line for a second visit, so a January take-down trip — a second crew day and a second round of travel — is quoted the same as a job that only ever gets hung once. | Prices take-down hours as a ratio of the hang labor and adds a second travel trip whenever take-down is selected, so the second visit shows up instead of being absorbed. |
| Assumes a 1-story extension ladder, so a 2-story taller ladder or a 3-story lift gets quoted the same as a job that needs neither. | Adds access hours and a lift invoice only for the stories entered, so a taller reach costs more than a ranch. |
| Prices "Christmas lights" as one flat run, with no separate line for peaks, tree wraps, bush nets, column wraps, a timer, or a steep pitch. | Times each extra separately from the entered counts, so a house with five tree wraps and three peaks prices differently from one with none. |
| Gives the crew a rate to quote, not a number to check a quote against when an owner asks to match a cheaper hang-only special on a full-service job. | Reports the walk-away price and the extra-work share of the job, so a shopped price can be scored against real cost before the crew commits to it. |
Three eaves, the same per-foot special
Using this calculator's own shipped presets, at its own shipped shop rates ($32/hr crew wage, 30% payroll burden, 15% overhead on direct cost, a 20% target margin, $55 travel and equipment):
| Job | This calculator's price | The flat $3/LF special | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 140 LF, 1-story C9 hang-only, customer-owned lights — the job the $3/LF special is built on | $539.43 bid price; $431.54 break-even cost | $420.00 | The special prices $11.54 below this job's own break-even cost — before a dollar of profit. |
| 160 LF, 1-story hang-and-takedown with 4 bushes and a timer | $1,236.73 bid price; $989.38 break-even cost | $480.00 | The special prices $509.38 below break-even and $756.73 below the calculator's own bid. |
| 200 LF, 2-story full-service Victorian: icicle lights, 5 peaks, 3 trees, 8 bushes, 4 columns, timer, steep pitch, storage | $4,822.33 bid price; $3,857.86 break-even cost | $600.00 | The special prices $3,257.86 below break-even and $4,222.33 below the calculator's own bid. |
The flat special is a fixed $3.00/LF, not derived from any of the three jobs. It does not clear even the cheapest one: a 1-story hang-only ranch on customer-owned C9, hung once with no January trip, is the job a $3/LF postcard rate is set on, and it still prices below this calculator's own break-even cost at these shop rates. Run your own house's numbers in the calculator to see where it falls.
A flat special is not wrong because it is simple — it is wrong when it is applied without checking it against a real cost base, and nothing about a per-foot postcard rate tells you when that has happened. This calculator does not replace judgment about your market; it replaces the arithmetic a flat rate skips.
Common questions
Why does a flat $3/LF Christmas light special get a bid wrong?
Because the cost driver is scope, stories, and extras, not "lineal feet of eave" alone. A 1-story hang-only on customer-owned C9 with no January trip is a different job from a 2-story full-service icicle install with take-down and off-season storage, and a flat per-foot number cannot see which one it is looking at.
What does a flat per-foot special usually leave out entirely?
The January take-down trip, off-season storage, the second ladder set a two-story eave needs, and every peak, tree wrap, bush net, and column wrap. A published hang rate is set on the cheapest run — a ground-reachable ranch, hang-only, customer-owned lights — and has nowhere to put the hours for a second visit, a taller ladder or a lift, or the extras a postcard special never itemizes.
How big is the pricing gap in practice?
On this calculator's own shipped presets, at its own shipped shop rates ($32/hr crew wage, 30% burden, 15% overhead, a 20% target margin, $55 travel and equipment): a 140-foot 1-story hang-only ranch — the job a $3/LF special is built on — has a $431.54 break-even cost against a $420.00 flat price, already below break-even before a dollar of profit. A 160-foot hang-and-takedown job with some bushes prices at $1,236.73 against a $480.00 flat price, a $756.73 gap. A 200-foot 2-story full-service Victorian with icicle lights, peaks, trees, and storage prices at $4,822.33 against a $600.00 flat price, a $4,222.33 gap.
Is a flat per-foot rate ever the right way to quote holiday lights?
Not on this calculator's own numbers, even for the cheapest job the rate is built on: a 1-story hang-only ranch already prices below its own break-even cost at a flat $3/LF, before take-down, storage, a second story, or a single extra enters the bid. The rate is not close on a hard case — it is short on the easy one.
Does this calculator know what to charge in my market?
No. It has no data on local rates or what competitors charge. It takes the eave footage, scope, stories, light type, extras, and your loaded labor and overhead, and turns them into a walk-away price and extra-work share for the job you describe — the arithmetic a flat rate skips, not a market survey.
Open the Holiday Light Bid Calculator to price your own job, or read how much to charge to hang Christmas lights.