Christmas lights - has anyone hired a company to install?

I've never done it because my husband would kill me for spending the money LOL but I keep threatening to so I could get some lights on my house!!

Curious to know what the cost usually would be

We don’t as ours are easy to do ourselves.
But my sister does - she has a big house in Orange County and they do the entire roofline, the balconies and three trees in front and it is $500-700.

One guy in my area charges $5 per foot. That includes the lights (rental), installation, and he’ll come back out of there is a problem.

No one in our neighborhood does their own - all hire it out.  We use the same guy each year and it is around $350.

I ran an online quote yesterday and it was over $2K! That was just the roofline and a wreath. No thanks.

We always do our own but I won't let DH get on the roof of our current house because it's really tall with a steep pitch. We've been doing net lights on the shrubs and low lights in the yard, but I'd love to get some more height. I'd definitely pay someone one some of the prices I've seen on this thread, but nowhere close to $2K.

We had a really impressive high schooler stop by and try to sell us on this service just the other day. He explained his process in detail and had a very professional brochure. Even talked about the insurance he had for his business.

I asked him for a rough estimate and he said it would be about $1,000 for the first year which included the lights.

I so want to support him and his initiative, but just can't justify spending that amount for something pretty frivolous. Maybe some day. . .

My house had a very steep roof with another high and steep peak on it.  My ex always did the Christmas lights when he lived there.  When we divorced, I just ran them across the lower edge of the roofline myself.  There was no way I was getting out onto my steep rooftop and since I was a single mom, there was no money for hiring a company to put them up for me.

A neighbor with the same roof as mine came up with a great idea.  He mounted the lights to two strips of wood painted to match the house trim and hinged in the middle to connect them.  This allowed him to space the lights perfectly and he loosely stapled them to the wood so that they didn't twist and turn.

He also mounted three large eye bolts on the beam in the center of the highest peak and at each end.  He then ran a dark thin metal chain through all three eye bolts that could not be seen throughout the year because everything was painted dark to match the trim.  When it came time to put the Christmas lights up, he just attached the end of one of the wooden strips to one side of the chain and pulled the strip into place by pulling on the chain. He did this from the upstairs master bedroom window so that he didn't have to climb out onto the roof each year. The lights went up perfectly and remained securely in place because they were attached well to the wood strips.  I'm sure I'm not describing it that well, but if you saw it, you would see that it was a genius plan.  

He made a similar setup for the lights along the lower edge of the roof.  Only this one he could set up from a ladder.  But the like the high peak, these were stapled to dark strips of wood that he just had to set behind the eye bolts that remained in place all year long.  His lights were always perfect.  And he just stored them on the ceiling inside his garage on hooks he mounted up there.  He said he came up with the plan because he was sick of having to untangle Christmas lights every year, no matter how carefully he wrapped them onto the holder at the end of the season.  And he was a bit OCD and hated when some of the lights were tipped up and some down.  That is what made him come up with the idea of securing them in place on the hinged strips of wood.  They couldn't possible get twisted into an up and down mess.

I think price is very dependent on where you live. In my neighborhood in TX everyone gets their lights professionally installed. We paid $800 the first year which included the cost of lights. Install and take down this year is $175. They will also replace any bulbs or damaged strands. A friend of mine in another state got an estimate and it was over $2000 for her house which is similarly sized to mine.

We did the year before we decided to sell the house. Lights were custom fit, the company put up and took down. They asked us to have a storage tub out after Christmas so they could put the downed light in. We stored them and left them for the new people. Initial cost was $450; $250 after that.

Where we live now, we string garland and lights across the front deck and a string or two on the peak of the house. Pretty easy, no installer needed. 

We pay about $750 per year for our Christmas lights to be hung before Christmas and taken down and stored after Christmas. We have white lights strung around our lower roof line (the peaks of the roof are really high). They also string multi colored lights on two of our trees and hang a lighted wreath on the house just below the tallest roof peak. It's simple, but I think it looks really nice.

The Christmas lights are definitely a splurge, but I love Christmas lights and I think they look especially good on our house because it has such high roof peaks.