It's usually the first question people ask. And honestly, it's a fair one. You want to know if this is a $500 project or a $5,000 project before you get too excited about it.
The answer is that professional outdoor lighting in the Pittsburgh area typically runs somewhere between $1,500 and $6,000 for a residential installation, with most homes landing in the $2,500 to $4,500 range. Larger properties, special order fixtures, or more complex designs can go higher.
But that range is wide enough to be almost meaningless without context. Here's what actually moves the number.
The size of your property matters, but not the way you'd think.
It's not really about square footage. It's about how much you want to illuminate. A modest ranch home with a dramatic oak in the front yard and a well-defined walkway might need fewer fixtures than a larger colonial with a long driveway, wraparound landscaping, and a back patio. The scope of what you want to light is a bigger factor than the size of your home.
Fixture count is the single biggest cost driver.
Every fixture adds to the total. Not just the hardware cost, but the installation time and the load on the transformer. A focused front-entry installation with 8 to 12 fixtures is a very different project from a full-property system covering the front, sides, backyard, and patio with 25 to 40 fixtures. Most homeowners start somewhere in between and expand later as the budget allows — which is one of the advantages of our well-designed low-voltage systems.
Professional grade versus box store is a real difference.
The fixtures used by professional installers are not the same as what you find at Home Depot or Lowe's. Professional-grade, low-voltage LED fixtures are built to handle Pittsburgh winters — and anyone who's dealt with a Pittsburgh January knows what that means for anything left outside. Freeze-thaw cycles, heavy snow loads, and the kind of moisture that kills a cheap socket in two seasons. The upfront cost is higher, but you're not replacing them every couple of years. For most homeowners, the long-term math strongly favors the professional system.
What you're not paying extra for.
A few things that might surprise you: the consultation itself is free, and there's no charge to have us walk your property and put together a detailed quote. Low-voltage LED systems also have a negligible impact on your electric bill, with most full residential systems running for pennies per night. And because there are no bulbs to replace, ongoing maintenance costs are essentially zero.
Curious what your home would run? Schedule a free evening walkthrough and we'll give you a real number.
So what does it actually cost for your home?
The honest answer is that we can't tell you until we see it. Two homes on the same street in Sewickley or Cranberry Township can have completely different scopes depending on what each homeowner wants to highlight, how much of the property they want to cover, and what the landscape looks like. That's not a dodge — it's just the reality of a custom installation.
What we can tell you is that the free evening walkthrough exists specifically to answer this question for your property. We'll walk the grounds with you at dusk, show you what's possible using our portable lighting kit, and give you a detailed quote before you commit to anything. No guessing, no pressure, no obligation.
If you've been putting off the conversation because you weren't sure if the numbers would work for your budget — that's exactly what the walkthrough is for.