A standard incandescent lamp for a pool light runs $30 to $70 per HomeGuide’s 2026 cost guide, more for halogen. The invoice for getting it changed is usually several hundred. That gap isn’t markup. It is the repair side of the business rather than a weekly cleaning visit: labor and electrical, the part of pool light replacement that never appears on a parts list. Someone gets in the water, backs a fixture out of a concrete pocket it has sat in for a decade, pulls new cord through conduit, and confirms the breaker and the bonding still work.

How a pool light replacement is done

Three parts matter. The niche is the recessed housing cast into the pool wall. The fixture sits inside it, held by one screw through the face ring. Conduit runs from the back of the niche to a junction box above the water, where the cord terminates on dry terminals. The niche stays full of pool water, which is why the fixture is potted and gasketed.

Kill the breaker. Back out the screw. Ease the fixture onto the deck, which works because a loop of spare cord is deliberately coiled behind it inside the niche. Disconnect at the junction box. On a full replacement the old cord becomes the pull line for the new one.

That pull is where the time goes, and Pentair’s IntelliBrite guide explains the care: “if the cord is damaged, the luminaire shall be destroyed.”

When a drain is genuinely on the table

Three real cases.

The niche is shot. Rusted-through stainless in an older gunite pool, a cracked housing, a broken conduit hub. That’s concrete work on a pool wall, so the water comes down past the light. Pick your season while you are at it: our notes on acid washing in winter ahead of spring explain why January beats July for combining the two jobs. Cost guides put niche replacement at $300 to $900 on top of the rest, and you only pay to refill once.

There’s no usable conduit path. Conduit crushed by roots or settling, cord fused into the pipe, or an install old enough that nobody ran proper conduit. If new cord won’t pull, you’re looking at new conduit or a nicheless retrofit fixture.

The equipment pad sits downhill. Conduit is water filled up to pool level, so on a sloped lot the junction box can sit below the waterline. Open the box at the bottom of a hill and you can siphon the pool through it.

Where the money goes on a light job

The pool light replacement ranges below are national market figures from named sources, not Primary Pools prices.

Lamp only: $30 to $70 for incandescent per HomeGuide’s 2026 guide, up to $120 once halogen is in the mix. An LED retrofit lamp into an existing fixture runs $50 to $600 (HomeGuide), a spread that is almost entirely white versus color.

Full fixture: $500 to $700 incandescent like for like, $600 to $1,500 for LED (HomeGuide). Converting a 120V light to low voltage LED lands at $500 to $1,400 total, per the same guides.

Labor: HomeGuide has pool pros at $50 to $100 an hour and electricians at $50 to $130. Cost guides put licensed electrical labor at $75 to $150 an hour and bonding or grounding upgrades at $150 to $600, then add the items that quietly move a quote: a 12V transformer at $60 to $350.

So the asymmetry flips with the job. On a lamp swap the part is pocket change against the visit. On a color LED conversion the fixture is the biggest line on the sheet (Vita Pool Supply, an authorized Hayward dealer, lists a 12V ColorLogic 320 at $569 to $629). What blows up a quote either way usually isn’t the light. It’s corroded junction box terminals, a box never mounted high enough, or a missing bonding conductor that has to be run before anyone signs off.

It is also why we won’t put a number on this over the phone, a policy that sits on our FAQs page. Nobody can price a niche they have not looked into.

Why LED beats replacing an incandescent like for like

If your fixture is incandescent and dead, convert. Not because LED is fashionable. Because the math isn’t close.

AQUA Magazine, the pool industry trade publication, puts pool incandescents at 300, 400 and 500 watts, with LEDs producing equivalent light on 45 to 70. Rated life is the bigger gap: 2,000 to 4,000 hours incandescent against more than 30,000 for LED. Their worked example runs a 45-watt LED against a 300-watt incandescent, eight hours a night at 15 cents a kilowatt hour, and gets about $20 a year versus $131. Hayward claims up to 79 percent savings on its ColorLogic 4.0.

Two things make that better across the pools we run in Ventura County. Southern California Edison’s time-of-use plans price evening hours highest, and nobody runs a pool light at eleven in the morning. And at 2,000 to 4,000 hours, an incandescent lamp isn’t a purchase, it’s a recurring service call at the labor rates above.

What a color LED does that a white one doesn’t

Hayward’s specs for the ColorLogic 4.0 are a fair picture of the category: five fixed colors, seven light shows, brightness from 20 to 100 percent, and an all-white override.

Honestly, if you only ever use white, you’ve paid a few hundred extra for a dimmer. Color earns its money when a spa is on the same system and you want the two matched, or when the backyard gets used at night. One caution either way, from Pentair’s manual: these lights cannot go on a wall dimmer, which will permanently damage them.

The electrical side, and why the simple-looking part isn’t DIY

Pentair’s IntelliBrite 5G installation guide, the manufacturer’s own document, states the light “must be installed by a licensed or certified electrician or a qualified pool professional in accordance with the current National Electrical Code (NEC), NFPA 70.” The same manual spells out why:

• 120 VAC lights must be protected by a GFCI with an appropriately rated breaker. 12 VAC lights don’t require one in the US, but do require a separate step-down transformer.
• The niche housing must be bonded to every metallic item within 5 feet of the pool using No. 8 AWG bond wire.
• Where conduit is non-metallic, a No. 8 AWG bonding and grounding wire runs through it from the junction box to the lug inside the niche.
• The top of the lens has to sit at least 18 inches below the water surface.

Equipotential bonding ties every piece of metal a swimmer could touch together so there’s no voltage difference between them. It isn’t grounding, and it’s the item most often missing or corroded away on an older pool. Worth knowing alongside your household pool safety rules.

Why pool lights fail

Water in the fixture. The lens gasket hardens with age. Once water reaches the socket you get a dead lamp, a corroded contact, or a breaker that won’t stay in.

Corroded contacts. Hard Southern California water plus years of chlorine does this quietly, which is why a lamp that looks fine can read open.

Transformer failure on low voltage systems. A 12V light depends on a step-down transformer at the pad. If the fixture is dead and the lamp tests good, measure transformer output before anyone orders a new light. Confirm what is arriving before you replace what sits at the far end.

Should weekly service be catching this? A tech at the pool every week should flag a dark light or a tripping breaker as part of the equipment check, which is item by item on our what a weekly service visit covers.

Three quick ones before you call an electrician

Can I put an LED lamp in my existing incandescent fixture? Often yes. Retrofit lamps thread into many standard wet niche fixtures, and it’s a good move if the body, lens and gasket are sound. If the housing is twenty years old with a chalky lens, you’re setting up to pay the same labor twice.

Do I need to do both at once? No. But if they’re the same age and both incandescent, one trip saves a second labor charge, and a lamp swap is an hour while a full fixture can eat a visit. New color LEDs from different generations often won’t sync with each other, either.

How long should a new LED last? Rated at 30,000 hours and up, but gaskets, water intrusion and transformers fail long before the diodes do. Plan on several years of real service, not the spec sheet.

Start with the free checks

Breaker on, GFCI reset once, timer or automation calling for the light at all. If it trips a second time, stop there and leave the circuit off.

If the fixture is sound and only the lamp is gone, a lamp or LED retrofit is the cheap right answer. If the fixture is dead and incandescent, convert while someone is already there. And if anyone quotes a full drain for a routine swap, make them explain what requires it.