Green Up Your Holiday Decorations

Christmas lights are a great way to add festivity to your home. However, old incandescent light strings use excessive energy and have a few other serious drawbacks. Consider switching to LEDs for these reasons:

• Energy Efficiency: LEDs use approximately ten percent of the energy it takes to run incandescent bulbs. If you hang lights on your tree, your front porch, and just a couple more places around the house, the energy usage adds up quickly. Save some money and lower your carbon footprint by ditching the old lights and 90 percent of the energy needed to run them.
• Fire Safety: Incandescent bulbs generate significant heat while LEDs remain cool. Given that most people like to put lights in dry trees and near other flammables like curtains, switching to LED bulbs reduces the risk of fires. This is especially serious if you like to keep your Christmas lights up for an extended period of time.
• Longevity: Incandescent bulbs can be used for about 2000 hours before the filament burns through. LEDs can last up to 100,000 hours. Even if you like to run your lights for 24 hours a day for an entire month, that’s still 134 holiday seasons with the same lights, compared to less than three years with incandescents. This longevity, paired with decreased energy usage, easily counters the higher initial cost of LEDs.
• Durability: Traditional bulbs on holiday lights are made from glass, which breaks easily. LEDs have a hard plastic shell that is practically indestructible.
• Reliability: With some incandescent light strings, one bulb burning out ruins the entire string. This is because the filament is part of the circuit, so power cannot get to the other bulbs if the circuit is incomplete. LEDs don’t have this problem, so you never have to worry about one bulb going out and taking down a whole string. (Higher end incandescent strings also avoid this problem with a shunt to carry electricity if the bulb burns out).
• Brilliance: LEDs produce brighter light than their incandescent counterparts with less fading, particularly for colored lights. Colored LEDs, especially in blues, are much more vibrant than incandescents. LEDs got a bad reputation early on for their cold, blue tone. With improved technology, LEDs are now also available in warmer colors as well as bright white.

If you like big holiday light displays, the energy and hassle savings of switching to LEDs will be even more pronounced. Change over for the environment, safety, (eventual) cost savings, brilliant colors, or the ease of never having to replace bulbs. Whatever you do with your decorations, enjoy the holidays!