Landscape lighting is priced the same way everything else here is: $3,000 to $5,000 for a standard project, $15,000 and up for a mid-size one, $30,000 to $50,000 or more for a property lit end to end. Those are whole-project prices, never per-tree or per-foot-of-cable rates. What moves the number on a property is cable run length, how much of the plan is trees versus beds, whether there are steps, whether there’s a pool edge, and where the transformer can live.
Quick reference
- What costs money — distance and digging, not the fixtures.
- Trees — fewer fixtures, longer runs, often a trench across the lawn.
- Beds and walkways — short runs, more fixtures close together.
- Steps and pool edges — the most labour per metre of anything on the property.
- Warranty — 3 years on landscape lighting.
Why the price is decided underground
A fixture set in a bed three metres from the transformer and the same fixture at the back of the yard do not cost the same to install. Between them sit a trench, lifted sod, a walkway to route around, and buried low-voltage cable.
That’s why a plan with ten clustered fixtures goes in faster than a plan with six scattered ones. Fixture count lies. The run map tells the truth.
What changes the number
Run length
The first variable, and the only one that can be roughly estimated before arriving, from a satellite image. On site it almost always changes, because the real route goes around things you can’t see from above.
Trees versus beds
Uplighting a mature maple takes few fixtures but needs distance — the fixtures sit back from the trunk to reach the canopy, so the runs get long. A planting bed does the opposite: many fixtures close together on very little cable.
Steps and low walls
A flight of steps is the most labour-intensive metre on the property. Every riser is a mounting point, and the supply has to disappear inside a structure that’s already built.
The pool edge
This is where routing matters most. Cable can’t take the short way through coping or a poured slab, so it goes around, and the price follows the real path.
Where the transformer goes
It needs an exterior outlet and a wall. If the only available outlet is on the wrong side of the house, the whole network starts further away — an invisible detail on paper that moves the number more often than two extra fixtures do.
What digging involves in Québec
Low-voltage cable gets buried, and burying means checking what’s already down there. The Régie du bâtiment du Québec requires a locate request before excavation work, submitted free of charge through Info-Excavation.
The request has to go in at least four business days before work starts. That’s one reason a landscape project isn’t scheduled for tomorrow, and it’s a step the contractor handles, not you.
When it isn’t worth a project
Two shrubs and a six-metre walkway in front of a single-storey house don’t justify a designed system. There isn’t enough depth on the lot for the effect to register, and the gap between that and good facade lighting is small.
Landscape lighting earns its price when there are planes to separate: a foreground of beds, a backdrop of trees, a path running between them. The landscape lighting page shows what that looks like on properties shaped that way.
Two things you only learn on site
Trees grow. A fixture aimed tightly at a young canopy is lighting a bare trunk five years later, so the aim is left with room and the cable at the base is left with slack on purpose.
And lawn lies about what it hides. An irrigation line, an old dog-fence wire, half a removed patio base — the trench finds all of it, and that’s the kind of discovery that sends a run down the opposite side of the yard.
One last point of method: we light what you look at from inside first. The kitchen window and the patio door shape the plan more often than the view from the street does, because that’s where the yard is actually seen after dark.
Common questions
Do you charge per fixture? No. The price is a whole-project price, because two plans with identical fixture counts can take twice the work depending on the runs. A per-fixture rate would look simple and mislead you.
What’s the warranty on landscape lighting? Three years on the landscape products. Labour is a separate three-year warranty: inside that window a visit to replace a covered part costs nothing; after it, the part stays covered but the visit is billed hourly at the rate in force at the time.
Does it survive winter and the snowblower? The fixtures are sealed to IP68 and rated to −40°C. The real risk here isn’t cold, it’s the shovel — fixtures get set back from the edges that get cleared, and that’s a decision made on site.
Can it go into an already-landscaped yard? Yes, that’s most jobs. The trench is narrow and the sod closes back over it, but the locate request still has to go in before anyone digs.
Does it run off the same controller as the facade? Landscape and facade are managed together as zones. The exterior lighting page explains how zones are split, the services page covers all four lines, and finished properties are in our projects.
For a number on your property rather than a range, a free on-site estimate starts with a visit of about 40 minutes, anywhere in the service area.