Brighter Nights · Field Tools No. 04
Most jobs are three jobs. Landscape in the beds, a pool enclosure, roofline round the perimeter — quoted separately, they never add up to the day you actually work. Put every phase in once and get one labor number, plus the real range that number could have been.
Labor only. Materials, fixtures, transformers, wire and trenching are quoted separately — this tool never guesses at them.
Step 1 · your rates
Linear systems are priced by the foot. Landscape fixtures are priced by the piece. Set where you sit in each band — difficulty, access and your market all move it.
24V · linear systems
Roofline, pool enclosure, soffit, deck
$3.50 / LF
12V · landscape fixtures
MR16, PAR36, G4 pathway, sconce
$40 / piece
Step 2 · the scope
Add a phase for each system on the property. Pick the system and the tool knows whether it bills by the foot or by the piece.
Free. No account, no email, nothing saved.
The answer
Where your rate sits in the band
Steady
$0 —
Labor is the half you control. The other half — what the fixtures, transformers, wire and controllers cost you at the counter — is contractor pricing, and it is confidential. A login is the only place it can legitimately live.
Register as a Brighter Nights installer and this page adds:
Coming next: saved jobs and a one-page PDF with your logo for the homeowner. Not built yet — we would rather say so than promise it.
Register as an installerTakes a minute. No card, no contract, no obligation to buy anything.
The arithmetic, out loud
They are the bands Brighter Nights Lighting Technologies uses when it talks contractors through pricing a job: $2–$5 per linear foot on 24V linear systems, and $25–$60 per fixture on 12V landscape. They are labor guidance, not a price list, and they are deliberately wide because access, height, substrate and market move a job more than the system does.
Because material cost is the one number we cannot publish. Contractor pricing on fixtures, transformers, controllers and wire is confidential, and putting it on an open page would put it in front of every competitor as well as every installer. Labor is yours, it is the half you set, and it is the half most estimates get wrong.
Because a rate at the floor of the band is a real risk signal, not a neutral choice. The band exists because jobs differ; bidding the bottom of it on every job means you are pricing as if every job were the easiest one you will ever do. The lamp tracks where you sit between the floor and the ceiling — it dims as you approach the floor and burns steady in the middle.
Not on this page. Linear systems are billed by the foot, so the fixture count does not change the labor line. It does change the material line, which is why fixture-count-from-footage sits behind the installer login alongside the pricing it feeds.
Choose Custom and pick the unit yourself. The rate still comes from whichever band you assign it to, so the range at the bottom of the page stays true.
No. It is the same scope priced at the two ends of the band — the floor and the ceiling of what this work is charged at. It tells you how much room the rate decision is actually worth on this job, which on a large property is usually more than any line item you would argue about.
