What permanent Christmas lights cost

The direct answer: dealer-installed permanent lighting is published at roughly 18 to 35 dollars per linear foot, which puts a typical street-facing install between about 2,700 and 8,750 dollars depending on roofline length and complexity. Homeowner-installed kits from Govee and Philips Hue work out in the region of 3 to 4.50 dollars per foot of hardware at current manufacturer list prices, with your own labor on top. Both numbers are real; they are not alternatives priced on the same basis, and this page is about the difference.

The two markets, and why the numbers look incompatible

A dealer quote is a finished job: engineered channel, lights, controller, programming, installation labor and a warranty, delivered by a trained crew with insurance. A DIY kit is a box of hardware. The ten-times price gap between them is almost entirely labor, channel engineering and the warranty — not the LEDs.

What a dealer quote actually itemizes

This is the part that is hard to find out before a salesperson is in your driveway, so here is what the brands themselves publish. Trimlight states that its per-linear-foot pricing reflects a fully installed cost including the channel, the bulbs, the controller and the labor, with no separate labor line item. That bundling is the norm at the dealer end, and it is why asking for a breakdown often gets you a single number.

JellyFish prices the same way per foot — it publishes 25 to 35 dollars per linear foot installed — but breaks out the controller, which it lists at 650 to 850 dollars. One JellyFish controller is specified to drive 263 feet of lights, with a system maximum of 2,400 feet. That matters on a large house: once your lit run passes 263 feet, you are into a second controller, and that is a four-figure swing on the same quote.

What it comes to on a real roofline

Per-foot pricing only becomes useful once you put your own house into it. An independent installer publishes worked all-in ranges by roofline length, which is the most honest form these numbers come in — a range, because no two rooflines price the same.

The same source notes that homeowners frequently report quotes above the published range, particularly on complex two-story rooflines — steep pitches, multiple zones and difficult access all push the number up. Treat the published range as the floor of your expectations rather than the middle. And measure before you call anyone: a quote you cannot check against your own footage is not a quote you can compare. Measuring your roofline is a twenty-minute job that makes every subsequent conversation shorter.

DIY cost per foot, worked out

The DIY end of this market is priced per kit, not per foot, so the comparison needs doing by hand. These are manufacturer list prices read on 2026-10-23, converted to a per-foot hardware cost. Retail prices on these kits move constantly and discount heavily — the buy controls further down this page show the current figure, and the arithmetic below is for comparison with the per-foot dealer pricing, not a price quote.

That bracket is corroborated from the other direction: an installer who fits a homeowner-supplied Govee system into professional track publishes the lights at roughly 3.80 dollars per foot and the track plus installation at 18 to 21 dollars per foot, for an all-in 22 to 25 dollars per foot. In other words, in a professional install the lights themselves are well under a fifth of what you pay. Everything else is channel, labor and warranty.

What the quote leaves out

These are the costs that appear after the estimate, in roughly the order people hit them.

• An exterior outlet. A permanent system needs a permanent, weather-protected, GFCI-protected supply in the right place. If you do not have one, that is an electrician's visit on top of the lighting quote, and it is not in the lighting quote. No outdoor outlet covers the options and GFCI and outdoor lights covers why it has to be protected.
• A second controller. Published at 650 to 850 dollars by JellyFish, with one controller covering 263 feet. Over that length, ask which side of the line your house falls on before you sign.
• The elevations not quoted. Street-facing pricing is the industry norm. Lighting the back of the house later is a second mobilization and rarely priced at the original rate.
• The labor warranty gap. Parts warranties in this category run long — Trimlight publishes lifetime coverage on components while the system remains installed — but the labor term is shorter, with authorized dealers backing installation work for a minimum of one year. A parts-covered repair in year four can still be a billable visit.
• Your own time, on a DIY install. Every kit in this category tapes for position and screws for permanence, which means pilot holes at every light. On a 60-light run that is the difference between an afternoon and a weekend, and it is the real cost of the DIY route.
• Takedown that never happens. This one is a saving, not a cost, and it is the actual product: no annual install, no annual removal, no ladder in December. Are permanent Christmas lights worth it does the full arithmetic against a seasonal display.

The break-even, honestly

Trimlight publishes a two-to-four-year break-even against repeated seasonal installation costs, and JellyFish notes that seasonal installers can cost 1,000 dollars or more per year. If you genuinely pay for installation and takedown every December, that arithmetic holds and a permanent system is a reasonable purchase on money alone.

If you currently hang your own lights, it does not. A C9 run on reusable clips costs a small fraction of any permanent system and almost nothing in subsequent years, and no break-even arrives. What you are buying in that case is labor, safety and the eleven months the house is lit for something other than Christmas — all three are legitimate reasons, but none of them is cost. DIY versus professional install cost sets the two bases side by side.

Five questions that make quotes comparable

1. What is the lit linear footage, and which elevations does it cover? Get it written down. Everything else divides by this number.
2. What is the price per linear foot, all in? If the answer is a lump sum, divide it yourself and compare against the 18 to 35 dollar published band.
3. How many controllers, and is each one priced separately? At 263 feet per controller on some systems, this is where a quote quietly jumps.
4. What is the parts term and what is the labor term? They are almost never the same number, and the labor term is the one that costs you in year three.
5. What happens if a section fails in year five? Ask for the service-call policy in writing. A lifetime parts warranty with a billable visit is a different product from one without.

Where the DIY money goes furthest

If the dealer number has decided it for you, the kits below are the ones worth the hardware budget. The cheapest route is the entry Govee system, which is also what Costco sells as the Elite — fine on a straight run, and the reasons to avoid it on a complicated roofline are in the Elite review. Pay up to a Pro model if your roofline needs cutting to fit, which most do. If you already run Philips Hue, Hue versus Govee compares the two permanent systems on published figures, and the best permanent outdoor Christmas lights ranks the whole field. For what each sales channel does to the warranty, see where to buy permanent Christmas lights.

How we sourced these figures

Every price on this page comes from a published source: the brands' own pricing and warranty pages for dealer systems, an independent installer's published project ranges, and manufacturer list prices for the DIY kits read on 2026-10-23. We did not estimate, average or model any number. We also have not been quoted on your house, and no page can do that — the only firm figure in this category is a written quote. All sources are linked below. See methodology.