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LED Lights: Dreamin’ of a Green Christmas

by Emily Pilloton, 10/27/07

LED Christmas lights, LED Xmas Lights, LED Holiday Lights, energy efficient lights, LEDs, LED holiday lights, efficient bulbs, sustainable lighting, green your christmas tree, green christmas,

The holidays are just around the bend! For all you holiday planners with decorating on the brain, make sure to light up your holiday nights this year with the greenest Christmas lights available - LEDS.

LEDs use 10% the electricity of incandescents, and are 90% more efficient than their old-school tungsten counterparts. They’re perfect for strings of holiday lights, because they don’t get hot, they last forever and when one burns out, it doesn’t take the whole chain with it! You’ll get a full 100,000 hours out of most LEDs, they’re made with less nasty chemicals, and come in all kinds of festive shapes! What more could you ask for? Read on for some suggestions on where to buy…



LED Christmas lights, energy efficient lights, LEDs, LED holiday lights, efficient bulbs, sustainable lighting, green your christmas tree, green christmas

SNOWFLAKES!!!
$17.38 for 35-bulb string from Environmental Lights

LED Christmas lights, LED Xmas Lights, LED Holiday Lights, energy efficient lights, LEDs, LED holiday lights, efficient bulbs, sustainable lighting, green your christmas tree, green christmas,

‘WARM’ WHITE LIGHTS
$18.39 for a string of 35 from Environmental Lights

LED Christmas lights, energy efficient lights, LEDs, LED holiday lights, efficient bulbs, sustainable lighting, green your christmas tree, green christmas

Multi-Colored Wide-Angle lights
$12.99 for 50-bulb string from ChristmasLights.com

LED Christmas lights, energy efficient lights, LEDs, LED holiday lights, efficient bulbs, sustainable lighting, green your christmas tree, green christmas

WINTER STAR BURSTS
$180 for 80 lights in 8 strands from Christmas Lights Etc

While some criticize LED color rendering for being too blue or “cool,” some companies have engineered their holiday lights to mimic the traditional warm tungsten bulbs- so you don’t have to lose that warm holiday glow.

There are many other cool designs out there as well. We’ll be sure to bring you a second installment of LED as the holidays get closer… but the early bird catches the worm so get “glowing!”

+ LED Christmas Lights


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18 Responses to “LED Lights: Dreamin’ of a Green Christmas”

User Gravatar
Kopernik Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 2:53 am

№ 7 is looking not so appetizing :)

User Gravatar
www.christmasforallofus.info » LED Lights: Dreamin’ of a Green Christmas Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 6:27 am

[...] Emily created an interesting post today on LED Lights: Dreaminâ of a Green Christmas.Here’s a short outline:For all you holiday planners with decorations on the brain, make sure to light up your holiday nights this year with the greenest LED Christmas lights. LEDs use 10% the electricity of incandescents, and are 90% more efficient than their … [...]

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erin Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 5:13 pm

the problem with LED christmas lights is that they don’t twinkle. tungsten lights twinkle, and i’d honestly rather have my lights on 90% less if it means the 10% of the time they’re turned on they twinkle. i mean, the ones featured on the last photo down look like ornaments for a bad rave. the white ones above them look soulless. i could keep going on, but the bottom like is that LED christmas lights look like crap. what’s up with that?

User Gravatar
erin Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 5:15 pm

bottom liNe, not liKe. sorry.

User Gravatar
rachael Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

What is wrong with people? “not liKe. sorry.” Well, one day, you won’t have choice when you are suffering rolling blackouts because people can’t sacrifice “twinkling” for energy efficiency.

User Gravatar
Alex Ribeiro Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

“when you are suffering rolling blackouts because people can’t sacrifice “twinkling” for energy efficiency.”

Modern american way of life.

User Gravatar
erin Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 2:06 am

““when you are suffering rolling blackouts because people can’t sacrifice “twinkling” for energy efficiency.”

Modern american way of life.”

good thing i live in vancouver, canada where we’re we haven’t overpopulated a desert and we have ample hydroelectricity. i’m plenty aware about environmental issues, and have likely been for far longer than you have, but there’s no way you can tell me that those lights look good unless you’re one of those people who wears crocs.

User Gravatar
miller Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

thank you rachael. erin, for a happy energy-efficient twinkling christmas see:

http://www.environmentallights.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1004_2355&products_id=11789

User Gravatar
ellen de vries Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 4:05 am

Please, don’t believe what manufacturers say about LED. They don’t live for 100.000 hours. And with the old goodies you could replace one. This is not possible with LED. You can’t repair. So if one color stops working (which occurs quite often) you’ll throw away the complete set. That’s not a really environmental friendly thougt.
And if you want a really natural christmas tree with warm white light, incandescent is the only choice because of its great spectral quality.

User Gravatar
Steven Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 10:54 am

Ahum,

Once again i have to reply on a thread about LED christmas lights because it gets flooded with false claims or accusations.

Erin: LED lights can twinkle just as nice as incandescent lights and even nicer because you can do all kinds of cool and/or fun things with them. I make my own LED light strings in FULL COLOUR RGB LEDs, I don’t see anyone do that anytime soon with incandescent lamps.
If a LED is on all the time and an incandescent lamp is on 15% of the time (which I really, really doubt, I would think at least 25% on time), the LED will still be just as efficient as an equally bright incandescent lamp.
LED twinkling just requires some driver circuitry, which can be as simple as one 555 timer chip and some resistors and capacitors.

Ellen: There are now LEDs that guarantee a 90% light output over their expected life range of 100K hours, so your claim is at the very least inaccurate. Incandescent bulbs will have died out many many years before these LEDs. When these LEDs are run for 8 hours a day, every day of the year, they will last +/- 34 years and will still be 90% as bright as they where 34 years earlier when they where first ignited. Even with less efficient LEDs at let’s say 40000 hours, they would last 13 years at 8 hours a day. If you used incandescent bulbs 8 hours a day, I guarantee you they will start to die in a year, maximum 2.
Led bulbs can be replaced depending on the manufacturer and model, you could also take out the soldering iron or ask someone with some minimal sodlerign skills to do it for you (in 13 years from now, maybe you will be able to solder them yourself).

Warm white LED lamps are readily available at most LED suppliers, so there is no reason not to make a warm white LED chain. These warm white LEDs aso have a very pleasing spectrum.

I hope this corrects some of the misconceptions I read here.

Sincere regards,
Steven

User Gravatar
Scott Says:
November 1st, 2007 at 5:03 pm

I’ve been using these lights for a couple of years with great success, and don’t plan to go back to the old bulbs. They have worked especially well indoors and have the added benefit of reducing fire hazard and being virtually indestructible. I also like pulling them out of the box each year and NOT having to spend an hour tracking down and replacing blown bulbs. Outdoors, they feel a bit dim compared to the old-fashioned bulbs, but I suspect this will change over time.

User Gravatar
aaron Says:
November 5th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

The problem with the LED lights is that they aren’t warm like the incandescents that I like. The C7 and C9 especially look like garbage. The closest they get to matching the tungsten is that dark amber color, which doesn’t look nearly the same. Maybe if they used the C9 ceramic housings over LEDs, but I still haven’t see that. There’s a lot of improvement that needs to be made with these sets. I’ll be sticking with my incandescents for a while.

User Gravatar
Inhabitat » NYC Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree goes green! Says:
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:24 am

[...] the first time in its history, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, will be getting a new set of energy efficient LED Christmas lights which will be fully powered by solar [...]

User Gravatar
AXON » Blog Archive » NYC Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree goes green! Says:
November 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm

[...] the first time in its history, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, will be getting a new set of energy efficient LED Christmas lights which will be fully powered by solar [...]

User Gravatar
NYC Rockefeller Christmas Tree goes green « Everything : Design Says:
November 26th, 2007 at 8:46 am

[...] the first time in its history, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, will be getting a new set of energy efficient LED Christmas lights which will be fully powered by solar [...]

User Gravatar
Tony Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:38 pm

Hey Steven,

Please contact me at tonydotholm@comcast.net.

I’ve been trying to find supplies to also build my own lights.

Thanks

User Gravatar
tony watkins Says:
December 11th, 2007 at 3:24 pm

Hi I have got leds christmas lights this year for the first time and they are great, far better than the old tungsten ones. Mine include a 8 program package which will do all that the old bulbs did. And I have worked out that they will only cost me about £2.gbp in electricity for the entire period. Plus I do NOT have the hassle of trying to find the faulty bulb, each time

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Judy Says:
November 8th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

Would like to change my new LED multi lights to twinkling….can I purchase certain “twinkling bulbs” to do this?

 

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