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Lighting Software · Case Study

C9X PRO

Christmas and permanent lighting software for contractors. Photograph a house in the driveway, trace the rooflines once, and leave with a render, a price, and a proposal — without measuring anything twice.

LiveProduct DesignSoftware EngineeringAI RenderingCommercial Launch
A two-story house at night with warm white C9 lighting along every roofline, rendered by C9X PRO from a daylight photograph
Overview

Project overview

C9X PRO is Christmas and permanent lighting software for contractors. It takes a salesperson from a photograph taken in the driveway to a priced, rendered, signable proposal — and then hands the crew an installation plan built from the same design. We built it for Holiday Glow Co. first, then productized it for the trade.

The Problem

The most expensive hour in the business

Lighting contractors sell from a clipboard: measure the roof from the ground, guess the footage, describe the display in words, then re-key the same numbers into a quote, a proposal, and the crew's sheet. Every re-entry is a chance to be wrong, and the customer never sees the display before they buy it.

Our Approach

One design, everything downstream

One traced design that drives everything downstream — measurement, pricing, the night render, the customer proposal, and the crew's frozen work order all read the same geometry, so nothing is measured or typed twice.

The Workflow

Upload, design, render, price, propose, install

01  /  Upload

Start with the customer's actual house

Photograph the property on a phone in the driveway, then set the scale once by tapping the two sides of something you already know — a garage opening, an entry door, or a measurement you type in yourself.

C9X PRO's Set Scale sheet: two points tapped across the garage door, with a list of known references — double garage, single garage, entry door, door height — to choose from
Two taps across a 16-foot garage opening. Every run traced afterwards measures in real feet.
02  /  Design

Trace it once, and it measures as you draw

Tap along each roofline. Every run carries its own product, color and spacing — C9, C7, C6, mini, icicle, uplight, at spacings from 4 to 36 inches — and the footage and bulb count update as you go.

The C9X PRO build workspace: the property photo with ten traced runs, beside a panel listing each run with its product, color, spacing and footage
10 runs · 229 ft · 266 bulbs, live in the panel as the trace is drawn.
03  /  Render

Hand them the finished house

The daytime photograph becomes a nighttime presentation of the display just designed — their colors, their layout, their house. The scheme changes what the customer sees and never changes the measurement.

The finished nighttime render of the property, warm white C9 lighting along every roofline
Generated from the geometry traced on the customer's own photograph, not a stock illustration.
04  /  Price

The same trace becomes the price

Every traced run arrives as a line at the contractor's own rates. Nothing is measured twice and nothing is typed in again. Margin is checked while the job is priced, not after it is sold.

The C9X PRO pricing screen: one line per traced run with quantity, unit price and cost, beside adjustments, job expenses and a live margin panel
$2,748.00 of lighting, second story · steep pitch +15%, lift $650.00 — $3,810.20 total.
05  /  Proposal

A proposal, not a take-off

Generated from the same job. The render leads, because that is what a homeowner holds up to show somebody else — then the package and the number, and nothing else.

The customer-facing proposal: the night render, one package price, the equipment line, total investment, deposit and balance
$3,810.20 total, deposit $1,905.10. It never prints per-run footage, rates, bulb counts, cost or margin.
06  /  Work order

The sale becomes the installation plan

Accepting the quote freezes what was sold. The crew's copy keeps reading that snapshot even if the design is edited afterwards — including the lift the job was priced around.

The crew work order: sold scope frozen, boom lift required, per-run measured, billed and prepare footage with product, color, spacing, and materials to load
Work order #1007 — sold scope frozen, with every run's measured, billed and prepare footage and the materials to load.
The Detail That Matters

Color changes what they see, never what you measured

Scheme and geometry are separate. The same 229 feet of traced roofline renders in any color the homeowner asks for, and the quantity on the quote does not move.

The same traced design rendered in warm white
Warm white · 229 ft
The same traced design rendered in red / white
Red / white · 229 ft
The same traced design rendered in multicolor
Multicolor · 229 ft
What We Built

Capabilities

  • Photo-based scale calibration
  • Roofline, wrap, garland & wreath tracing
  • C9, C7, C6, mini, icicle & uplight products
  • Pitch-corrected measurement
  • AI night render from the traced design
  • Price book at the contractor's own rates
  • Customer proposal with deposit & balance
  • Frozen work order for the install crew
Roadmap

Where it goes next

  • Aerial measurement for ground runs and hidden roof sections
  • Permanent-lighting product lines alongside seasonal
  • Multi-crew scheduling from sold work orders
  • Homeowner-facing lead capture from a contractor's own site
Technology

Technology stack

Next.jsTypeScriptPostgreSQLDrizzleStripeVercel
Status

Live and selling

C9X PRO is on sale to lighting contractors at c9xpro.com. If your business runs on a workflow like the one this replaced, that is the conversation we want to have.