Using LED Lights to decorate for the holidays saves money because LEDs are more energy efficient.
The days of keeping up with the Joneses may be behind us, but if you’re in competition with the Griswold’s for the most outlandish display of Christmas lighting on the block, outdoor LED Christmas lights may help keep your energy costs down.
In recent years Light emitting diode or LED Christmas lights have begun to make headway in the marketplace and become much more prevalent and desirable for consumers. Previous versions of LED Christmas lighting left consumers wanting more. The earlier versions lacked a variety of colors, shapes, sizes and brightness.
Current versions offer a wide range of colors, are much brighter, come in many sizes and shapes, have the ability to blink, and use as little as one-tenth the energy as conventional outdoor Christmas lights. LED Christmas lights also burn cooler than traditional lighting and by doing so reduce the possibility of fires. Some estimates report that the current version of LED lighting can last up to 30 times longer than the conventional bulbs.
How much money can you save by switching to LED Christmas lights?
Traditional lights use about 10 watts per bulb. LED lights use only 0.04 watts per bulb. Let’s run the numbers. If you have 10 strings of traditional lights containing 25 bulbs per string around your home, you’d be using 2500 watts of electricity. Conversely, you could run 10 stings of 100 LED outdoor Christmas lights and at 0.04 watts per bulb you’d be only using 40 watts of electricity.
Choosing energy efficient lighting will keep you in the spirit without a huge bump to your electricity bill.
To save even more money, also consider putting a limit on the amount of time your lighting is on by setting them up with a timer. Some timers can be set to come on just after sunset and stay on for a specific number of hours. Such a setup will also assure that your costs are limited. Ultimately, you decide how festive you want to be but outdoor LED Christmas lights will help take the sting out of that first electric bill of the New Year.
