When LED Christmas Lights are NOT The Greenest Choice

What's the easiest way to make your Christmas decorations greener?

Most people would say, "That's easy, use LED Christmas lights instead of normal mini lights."

...but then again, most people might actually be wrong.

Read on to find out why.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE fan of LED lights...but I still don't have them on my house this year.

Why not?

Because I had 25 perfectly good strings of regular incandescent mini lights that still worked (which is about how many strings of lights are on my house right now). I think the better choice is to use what you have instead of send it to the landfill only to replace it with energy efficient LED lights.

Are LED Christmas Lights Worth The Cost?

Maybe...but maybe not.

In this DIY diffused party light project, we talked about how to find LED Christmas lights for around $10 per 100 light string, but if you need them from a big box store, you're going to pay at least $15 if not $20+ for a string of 100 led lights.

If I were to replace all of my Christmas lights with LED lights, it would cost me over $400...and that's IF I could find them for $15/string. I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of cash laying around.

Thanks to this nifty Holiday Lighting Energy Calculator that came to me via Earth911, I can tell that my Christmas lights are costing me $.55 at 5 KWH per day, versus $.05 at .5 KWH per day if I were to switch to all LED lights.

How to Save TONS of Money and Energy with Incandescent Christmas Lights

One word: TIMERS.

You may notice that 5 KWH is still rather low for 25 strings of Christmas lights. That's because I have them on this six outlet electro mechanical timer from Intermatic (which I've had for 6 years) which only lets them run from 5pm to 11pm every day.

You can buy timers for your indoor Christmas lighting as well. Not only does this regulate your energy use, but it can give the illusion that you're home, even when you're not...making the holidays a little bit safer this year.

What you want to keep in mind when planning timers for either outdoor or indoor lights is location. You want to try to get your lights to plug into the same area so you have to buy as few timers as possible. Get creative, I'm sure you can think of all kinds of clever ways to hide those extension cords...I sure did!

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Donna

I don't know what store you shop at, but in every big box store I've seen a string of 100 LED lights costs less than $10. I bought 5 boxes at Home Depot in Napa, CA for $5.99/box of 100. It's not just the energy savings, but they don't put off as much heat and are less likely to start a fire by sparking when a bulb burns out or breaks. 100W incandescent lights burning at approx. 335F, CFL lights burning at 179 F and LED bulbs burning at 87 F. You need to do some research before posting. Sorry, but your article read as that of not an amateur, but of someone that simply didn't put in the time to study his subject matter.

daveconrey

I agree with you about not swapping out your lights just for the sake of getting new, more-efficient lights. Why get rid of a perfectly good set of lights?

I do enjoy seeing the lights up and I do want to add a little to my meager collection of lights, but I'm still not sure I would switch to LEDs because they just look funny to me. Just like the old argument of incandescent lights vs. CFLs, the LEDs just can't match the warmth of the traditional lights. I want my white lights to look white, not blue.

Jeffrey

yo dave. lots of people have that same complaint about LED christmas lights. what you need to be sure to look for is WARM white LED lights. For several years there was only "white" or "true white" LED lights...that is the spectrum of white that looks bluish.

If you snag some "warm white" LED lights i'm sure you'll be happy with the all-too-familiar glow of warm light from your LEDs.

hope that helps.

MeanJoeGreen

Great post.

Bill

The irony of this post is astounding... How about not putting little flashing lights all over your house in the first place? This is why we're in this mess. Everyone is looking for a "greener" way to do the same ecologically harmful things they've always been doing. If we're going to do anything about global warming or the million other ways we're fucking up the planet we have to come to terms with actually giving up harmful behaviors instead of trying to improve them. Think of it mathematically. 2 bad points plus 2 more bad points equals 4 bad points. We can find a "greener" way and reduce that to 1 bad point each but 1 plus 1 is still 2 and we still end up fucked.

Jeffrey

I can totally see your point Bill. For me, I just think that doing things to live greenER are better than nothing at all. Just like me, countless people actually enjoy putting up Christmas lights and aren't going to stop doing it, for whatever reason...so why not talk about ways to do that in a greenER and better way? On the other hand, you're still right...the be-all, end-all would be to not do it at all...that's just not the side of the fence I come down on. I

Danika Carter

I wonder if the cords on LED's have the same issues with lead in the cords as incandescents do? Also, you're right better to use what you have rather than buy something new. It takes more resources to buy something new and what are you supposed to do with the old lights? You can't recycle them. Also, the gas involved in driving out to buy them the packaging, etc.

It would be less wasteful if you could just replace the incandescent bulbs with LED and keep the string, but I don't think you can do that. Too bad.

Jeffrey

Great questions danika. I'm not sure if the chords have the same lead issues or not...it'd be good to know though. I do know that SOME stores like Home Depot and Lowes are (or at least were) taking old mini lights and somehow recycling them. I also know that some cities make means for them to be recycled. Earth911.org would have all that info for sure.

It'd be incredibly awesome if you could just buy LED mini light bulbs and pop them in the other mini light strings. that's an idea right there...

Becky

This is great! I am also a fan of Use What You Have.

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