The short answer
Installers price from linear feet of lit roofline, adjusted for stories, pitch, and peak count — more footage and more complexity mean more materials and ladder time. Traditionally that took an estimate visit with a tape measure; LightCast now measures footage and peaks from one photo of your house and prices the job in about a minute.
Every Quote Is Built From the Same Three Numbers
Strip away the sales talk and every professional lighting quote reduces to: how many feet of roofline get lit, how hard those feet are to reach, and how many cuts and corners the run requires. Footage sets the base — materials scale with it exactly, since commercial C9 runs are custom-cut to your lines. Height and pitch set the labor multiplier: a second-story eave takes ladder repositioning a ranch never needs. And peaks are the complexity tax — every gable is two angled cuts, a ridge clip, and ladder time, which is why two houses with identical footage can price differently.
Why Phone Quotes Used to Be Guesses
The industry's traditional options were an in-person tape-measure visit — accurate, but a scheduling dance for a fifteen-minute measurement — or the over-the-phone guess, which is where "estimates" that double on install day come from. Nobody can hear your roofline. Satellite tools helped some companies, but overhead imagery flattens exactly the dimension lighting cares about: the vertical faces and gable lines the display actually follows.
The Photo Method
This is the part we got tired of and built software for. LightCast works from one straight-on photo of your house, taken from the street on your phone. It finds the roofline automatically, you tap one known reference — your garage door is perfect, because standard widths make it a built-in ruler — and it converts pixels to real linear feet, counts the peaks and valleys, and prices the job from the same $18–32-per-foot model our crews quote from. The whole thing runs in your browser; the photo never leaves your phone. What used to be an appointment is now a minute, and the number you see is confirmed on site before anything is ordered — no double-on-arrival surprises.
Measure before you call anyone — including us. Knowing your own footage changes every conversation. When a competitor quotes you "around $1,200," you'll know whether that's a fair per-foot rate on your 140 feet or a guess with margin baked in. Informed clients get better numbers everywhere; that's why the tool is free.
Reading a Quote Like an Installer
With your footage in hand, evaluate any bid on four lines: the effective per-foot rate (divide the total by your feet — our market's honest range is $18–32); what's included (maintenance and takedown in, or billed later?); the materials (commercial LED C9 or retail strings); and the insurance (ladder work on your property, in writing). A bid that's vague on any of the four is telling you where the surprise lives.
The Bottom Line
Feet, height, peaks — that's the whole formula. Get your own numbers from LightCast in a minute, and every quote you collect afterward — ours included — has to survive arithmetic instead of vibes.
Want This Handled Properly?
Macomb Power Washing Solutions holds a 4.9-star rating across 160+ verified reviews, and free estimates go out within 24 hours. We carry $2M general liability and full workers' comp on every technician.