Why we've switched to LED holiday lights (and things to know about buying them)

If you remember, about a decade ago LED holiday lights hit the market, and they were very pricey. I remember seeing them in catalogs for $40-50 (US) per string! Yowza! Their prices have dropped substantially, and now you can find them in drug and discount stores for about $4-7 per string.

Three years ago, we began the transition to LED for our holiday lights, buying just a couple of strings per year. We now have all of our exterior lights as LEDs, and will buy some for interior use this year.

One caution, when deciding where to buy, these strings are still not so cheap that you feel okay if in year 3 you have a string that fails. Which is exactly what happened to us. So, where you buy matters. I'd recommend buying them in a store with excellent customer service and a very liberal return policy. I'd never, for instance, buy them at Wal-Mart, where if you're past the return policy window and they fail, you're just out of luck (and money). We bought ours from a local drug store chain (Bartell's for anyone in the PNW), where they are so helpful, and generous with their return policy, always. 

Well, Saturday, my husband went to hang the house lights, and one string would not light up. He took that one down, fiddled with it, replaced the fuse, twice, (just in case), checked the wiring as it entered the plug, etc. No luck. So, as I save receipts for durable goods in a box in my desk cupboard, I spent about 15 minutes combing through the receipts and found one for these lights sets, purchased in 2010. (We also save the boxes that these lights come in, and use for storage of the lights when not in use. On the package, there's a guarantee for 3 seasons of use. But they want you to ship the lights to some address in the US, which would cost us more than the lights originally cost.)

My husband took the non-working lights with the box and receipt to the store where we made the purchase, and they happily replaced them with a brand new strand. So, we're back in business here with our lights. (And I've decided to keep the receipts for these lights inside each box from now on, so I won't have to comb through all those receipts another time.)


You can't live in the modern world and not know that LED lights use a fraction of the electricity of standard incandescent lights. What I love about them is so often I turn the lights on at dusk, then totally forget about them. With the old type of lights, leaving the holiday lights on overnight, several nights of the season, just sucked up the electricity. With these, it's no big deal if I forget to turn them off.

Some bonuses of the LED holiday lights:

• on the strings I purchased, the average bulb life is 25,000 hours! If I have the lights on for 6 hours per day, 35 days of the year, the bulbs will last 119 years!
• the bulbs themselves are durable epoxy, that is break, and chip resistant (remember all those chipped-paint, colored outdoor lights?)
• these LED outdoor strings use between 80 and 90% less electricity than traditional light strings. Your typical incandescent C-9 light uses 7 watts per bulb, that's 175 watts per 25-light string. Compare this to the package of lights that we bought that uses 2.4 watts per string! (Our 4 strings across the front roof line of our house will cost under a dollar for electricity for the entire season.)
• LED bulbs are cool to the touch. You can handle them while lit. So, if you're like me, and when lighting bushes and trees in the yard, you like to have the lights on so that you can see your work as you go, you won't burn the tips of your fingers.
• also, because these lights are cool, there is less risk of a house fire from hot bulbs. (Though I would guess this risk depends on your style of holiday lighting -- Clark Griswold-style perhaps a greater risk than single string of lights along the gutter's edge.)
• because of the extremely low energy use, there's little chance of a circuit overload. Most incandescent holiday light strands will caution against connecting more than a few strings together. These LED strings can have up to 80 or 90 strings connected -- just in case you like the Clark Griswold holiday lighting plan.
• and of course, LEDs are better for the environment. By using less electricity, LEDs lower carbon emissions.

One warning -- do not mix incandescent holiday lights  with LEDs. Keep them on separate wall sockets.

To save on your purchase of LED holiday lights, consult your local utility company and/or local Home Depot. You may find a light exchange program going on, where you bring in your old strings of lights and they give you coupons to use on new LED lights.

You may wonder if you will recoup the cost of the sets in electricity savings. We have 4 strings of lights across the front edge of out house. With our average usage of about 6 hours per day, for 35 days, we'll save about $14.00 on electricity per year for that roof edge alone (we also have lights in the back yard that are LED). We paid an average of $6.50 per string of lights, bought on sale. It took us 2 years to recoup the cost of these new LED lights.

And if you're wondering, are we white light or colored light people -- we prefer the white lights, as I use them in the yard and on the deck in the summer, for festive (and now very cheap) outdoor lighting. We definitely get our money's worth out of our "holiday" lights!