Real Houston pricing from a local installer. What to budget by home size, what changes the number, and how reinstall pricing works after year one.
The first time someone hires a professional to put up Christmas lights in Houston, they almost always have the same reaction to the price. It's higher than they expected. Then they ask the right follow-up question: what does it actually include?
Once that gets answered, the math usually makes sense. Here's the breakdown I give every new caller.
For a typical Houston home, here's where most first-year clients land:
Year one is the highest cost because you're buying the materials. After that, the price goes down.
The materials are yours after year one. We store them in our warehouse between seasons. Each fall, we pull your bins, run the install, and put it all back exactly where it was the year before. That's a pure labor and storage charge, which is meaningfully cheaper than year one.
If you want to add or change something, that's the cost of new materials plus a little labor. Removing pieces brings the price down. Adding pieces brings it up.
When we quote a Christmas lighting install, the number covers the full season. Not just install day.
The price you're quoted is what you pay for the whole season. There's no surprise call-out fee in December. There's no separate takedown bill in January.
Roofline is priced by the foot. A single-story ranch is a different number from a two-story custom with multiple peaks and valleys. Steep pitches and second-story heights also add to the labor.
Tree wrapping is some of the most beautiful Christmas lighting we install, but it's also some of the most labor-intensive. A pair of small trees by the front door is one number. Wrapping a forty-foot oak in the front yard, trunk and major branches, is a different number. a Memorial-area home we've installed for ten seasons running includes four live oaks getting the full treatment every year.
Walkway lights, ground sparklers, and pathway accents add to both materials and labor. Customers usually love the result. We can scale these up or back depending on budget.
If you have garlands for the columns, wreaths for the windows, or wrapped figures for the lawn, we install all of it. We treat it the same way we treat our own work, which means it goes up clean and comes down without damage.
The two biggest reasons honest Christmas lighting in Houston costs what it costs are the materials and the season-long service.
The materials we install are not the same as what you can buy at a home improvement store. Commercial-grade C9 strands hold up to Houston humidity year over year. The strands you buy at retail are not designed to be reused on the same home for a decade. They're consumer products with a one-season life.
The other reason is the service. A truly low quote usually doesn't include mid-season maintenance, doesn't include takedown, and definitely doesn't include storage. Those things cost real money to provide. We bake them into the price because they're part of doing the job right.
We start accepting holiday bookings in September and typically fill the calendar before October ends. If you want lights up in November, the time to call is late summer. If you're reading this in December, it's worth a call anyway. We sometimes have cancellation slots open up.
Send us your address and a sentence about what you're picturing. We'll either come out to walk the property or use a satellite-and-photo mockup, depending on what makes sense, and put together a quote that reflects what we'd actually install.
Carlos Castellano · LUX Lighting Services · Houston, TX · Installing Christmas lights since 2005
The Christmas lighting service this guide is part of, and a real project where you can see what a full-season install looks like.
The calendar fills before October. Send us your address and we'll get you a quote within a business day.