LED Christmas Lights recommendations?

December 13, 2015 2:59 PM

Can you recommend LED (or other sturdy, low-power bulbs) bulbs to replace our large (C9) exterior Christmas lights?

LED bulbs are awesome - hard to break, use less power, etc. I've really liked replacing or incandescent bulbs with them. We have large (C9) multi-color Christmas lights for outside our house, and I'm tired of being so delicate with them. They're made of really thin glass and appear to be incandescent, so I assume they use much more power than LED bulbs.

I'd like recommendations for good LED multi-color Christmas lights (or other sturdy, low-power bulbs) to replace our standard lights. It would be nice to buy replacement bulbs and use them in our existing cords, but LEDs on cords are fine too. I imagine they'll be much more expensive than regular bulbs but that's fine if they're sturdy, long-lasting, and consume less power.

posted by Tehhund to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

You'll be surprised at just how expensive C9 LEDs are. I just finished doing a big lighting project at work and we bought empty cords with sockets and added bulbs ourselves and each of the bulbs was more than a buck and we got them wholesale. The cords are a minor expense when compared with the bulbs. Adding the bulbs yourself means that you can do totally custom patterns of colors which is nice.

We used Brite Ideas because the guy we dealt with is a distributor for them but Christmas Lights Etc is pretty reliable as well and probably more general consumer friendly.

You can sure string a lot of LEDs together and your electric bill will be surprisingly pleasant in comparison to other years.

Another idea would be to wait until just after Christmas and see what you can get on sale. The selection might be smaller but the price significantly better.
posted by sciencegeek at 3:17 PM on December 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: $1 / bulb is steep but doable. We don't have that many lights to replace. Thanks, I'll look into Brute Ideas.
posted by Tehhund at 3:27 PM on December 13, 2015

I don't think you're going to get close to $1/bulb. We bought a couple thousand and got really wholesale prices - I think you're looking at something on the order of $1.8 or more per bulb.
posted by sciencegeek at 3:31 PM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Target sells LED Christmas lights almost exclusively these days. Pricing seems to vary widely, but well below $1/bulb seems pretty common.

You will be buying new strings.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 4:51 PM on December 13, 2015

We've bought multiple sets of these EcoSmart lights from Home Depot. We got a bunch last year, and liked them so much that we bought more this year.

At $35 for 150 lights, it feels like a no brainer.
posted by gregvr at 5:21 PM on December 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

FWIW, The Sweethome (same folks who run The Wirecutter) did a review of Christmas lights recently. Might find something useful in there.
posted by Aleyn at 7:22 PM on December 13, 2015 [2 favorites]