Turning Holiday LIghts Off at Night?

December 11, 2020 8:30 AM

Should you turn your outside holiday lights / decorations off at night? Why or why not?

I grew up thinking it was dangerous to leave them on but maybe that is no longer true. I notice a lot of people leaving them on all night, which is truly lovely when I'm walking the dogs before sunrise. So now I think maybe I should leave mine on as well. Hive mind?

posted by mygothlaundry to Home & Garden (29 answers total)

I don’t think there is a “should” necessarily - just a personal preference. We leave ours on all night. Our bulbs are LEDs and the energy usage is minimal. This year in particular, I like to imagine folks traveling home after working swing shift at a grocery store or a hospital and being momentarily cheered by seeing our lights.
posted by arnicae at 8:35 AM on December 11, 2020 [26 favorites]

Some have sophisticated timers which may switch them off in the wee hours, for energy savings, but I always leave mine on all night. I'm confident that there's no danger in leaving my setup unattended - but if you aren't, better to turn 'em off while sleeping.
posted by Rash at 8:38 AM on December 11, 2020

Not sure how you live but I'm in Chicago where we are all veryclosetogether. A light that is festive and welcome at 9:30pm is maybe not so friendly at 2:30am when it's BLAZING EXTREME GOOD CHEER into your bedroom window, especially now that everything has the five billion candela intensity of LEDs.

If you're living cozy with a bunch of neighbors in your eyeline, imo it's polite to turn your decorations off at bedtime.
posted by phunniemee at 8:43 AM on December 11, 2020 [51 favorites]

This appears to be a safety question, so I'm answering that. There is a courtesy question and a wasteful energy use question, but you didn't ask those, so I'm not answering them.

Indoor holiday lights are somewhat of a safety hazard - older incandescent lights (no longer sold) combined with a not-necessarily well-watered several week old tree can result in a fire. That's a particular combination of circumstances that may or may not apply to you. Your house should have smoke alarms, so if that combination applies to you, it's more important for you to turn off the lights when you leave the house than when you go to sleep.

You should check how your outdoor lights attach to an outlet. Outdoor outlets should have waterproof covers, but those covers are generally not waterproof if not firmly closed. If rain gets into the outdoor outlet with lights attached, it's possible to short the prongs together. Your house should have a working fuse/breaker box, but you should check that your breakers are functional and fuses are not bypassed. Otherwise, the risk is more that whatever circuit the lights are on goes out randomly (possibly turning off other household devices) than fire.
posted by saeculorum at 8:43 AM on December 11, 2020 [5 favorites]

I think turning them off when you go to bed is more about energy savings. There MAY be a risk of danger if things short out in the middle of the night, but that's probably more of a concern only if you're using lights from the 60s or something.

One other thing to consider about leaving them on all night - if you're close enough to a neighbor that your lights would be shining in their window, you may run the risk of pissing off someone who's trying to get to sleep but can't because there is a damn blinking santa head keeping them up or something....however, if you've got a good bit of space between yards, that may not be a concern. It's something to think about, anyway.

For what it's worth, the houses in Brooklyn's Dyker Heights neighborhood, which goes all out with its lights, generally turn their lights off at about 9:30 each night so everyone can go to sleep and so their electric bills aren't even larger than they already are.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:44 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

LEDs use so little energy, I would leave them on all night. That said, mine are on the same timer as my inflatables, which use a TON of energy, so they go off around 10pm and come back on around 8am.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:58 AM on December 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm on phunnimee's side here, light pollution sucks and turning them off is polite. (I am also aware that I will never, ever get my way in this.)
posted by restless_nomad at 9:00 AM on December 11, 2020 [11 favorites]

I would say it depends on how close your neighbours are and your own judgement on how bright your display is. If there's a good distance between you and them, or if your lights are small or not that bright, by all means leave them on. If you're close together in a terrace, or if you're somewhere that usually has very little light pollution, I would consider turning them off or getting a timer so they're off for the darkest parts of the night.

It doesn't just impact humans around you, but wildlife as well might be confused by the abundance of lights and the addition to the general brightness of the world around them. Here's an article that touches on that aspect of it.
posted by fight or flight at 9:07 AM on December 11, 2020 [14 favorites]

You can get a timer for about $20 at your local big box hardware store that will turn on an off your exterior lights on a schedule. Do not buy a digital one - analog is much better and won’t break or poop out on you in the cold.

This way you can have your lights on in the evening and the dog walking hours but still save energy and be kind to people sleeping nearby by having them off 9pm-6am or whatever schedule seems right.

If you are running incandescents, I would limit the time you leave them on. They use a lot of energy and expend a lot of heat. Also they break easily.

If you haven’t switched to LED yet, it is very much worth it: less energy used, they’re more easily fixable, they break less and one bulb out won’t mean all the bulbs going out, they last longer.

Cons: they’re more expensive and some people don’t like the look of LEDS.
posted by sciencegeek at 9:10 AM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

We have all of our lights on smart timers. We don't have exterior lights (100-yr-old house with no exterior outlets and no way am I running an extension cord out the window like some of my neighbors do) so they are all internal on windows, up the stair railings, around door frames and ceilings, and the tree. We went a little crazy this year on interior lights to force some good cheer.

From a safety issue I don't think modern lights are dangerous to keep on all night but I do have a cat who sometimes gets into a destructive mood and I don't feel comfortable leaving the lights on in case he decides to have a good chomp on a wire or something. Not sure if the timers I use actually kill the power or if it's safer to chomp a light string that's off vs. on but I feel more comfortable only having the lights on when we are awake, and hopefully the cat is less enticed to cause trouble when they are off. So if you have pets that might be another thing to consider from a safety perspective.
posted by misskaz at 9:14 AM on December 11, 2020

Our rule of thumb is "If we're home and still up, the lights can be on. If we're away or in bed, the lights are off" It's always served us well.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:33 AM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have mine on a timer to go off at about 10pm. I also have battery LED lights on a couple of shrubs that stay on for six hours, so they're on all evening (they're exactly the same as the ones connected to the mains, flashing, multi-coloured, etc). The reason for this is not just energy/cost saving but I have close neighbours, and we all need our sleep.
posted by essexjan at 9:34 AM on December 11, 2020

The safety issue isn't the lights, it's the extension cords. Lights fail quickly when damaged; extension cords do not.

This just happened to a friend of mine. When the neighborhood and your household is asleep and the fire is crawling up the outside of your house, the smoke alarms don't go off until shit has already gotten very real.

So at the very least, you're best off with all extensions run to a timer at the outlet that cuts the power to the entire line, when it's not awake hours. You can get fancy timers that'll come on again in the early dogwalking hours if you like that, but someone in the household should also probably be an earlyish riser so they're not running unattended and unobserved for terribly long.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:35 AM on December 11, 2020 [10 favorites]

Another voice for 'off by 10pm please' if any neighbor's window is in line of sight of your lights.
posted by BlackPebble at 11:03 AM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

I have a solar timer, which turns the lights on automatically when it gets dark and turns them off six hours later. If I didn't have that I'd probably leave them on all night, but we are far enough apart that this is not going to bother the neighbors.
posted by gideonfrog at 11:32 AM on December 11, 2020

I keep mine on while there’s a fair bit of traffic outside as I feel it makes winter less depressing for the neighbours. By about 10-11pm I usually turn them off to save energy. (Mine aren’t super bright, they don’t blink, and they definitely don’t shine into anyone else’s home).
posted by nouvelle-personne at 11:57 AM on December 11, 2020

I was just wondering this myself this morning and looked out the windows to see what everyone else was doing. In my suburban neighborhood where there's maybe 10' between houses, it seems most people turn them off at some point at night. My direct neighbors still had theirs on this morning.

Now I'm thinking about setting the timer to make them come on early in the morning too...
posted by natabat at 12:17 PM on December 11, 2020

I turn my (meagre selection of) lights off at night, because I don't like light pollution. My neighbour is an amateur astronomer and he doesn't like it either.
posted by pipeski at 12:47 PM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

We have our holiday lights on a timer which automatically turns them on at dusk (i.e., when the timer's light sensor considers it sufficiently dark outside), and then automatically turns them off 8 hours later. Effectively that means they come on between 4pm and 5pm, and turn off between midnight and 1am.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:58 PM on December 11, 2020

I think it depends on the lights. Some of these newer LEDs are incredibly bright and the clear bulbs are that bluish white that is not cozy and disturbs your sleep. I feel like my boyfriend’s bedroom window is across the street from a fucking 7-11 when in fact it is across from a nice historic home festooned with white LEDs. +1 light pollution sucks.
posted by HotToddy at 1:27 PM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

I would turn them off because of light pollution.
posted by aniola at 2:15 PM on December 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

Also for birds as mentioned above.
posted by aniola at 2:17 PM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

The lights you enjoy in the morning are the lights that obscure the stars at night. LED lighting is less bad for fossil fuel use, but my neighbors installed big LED lights that they usually keep on all night, and I hate them. I moved away from town, in part, because the night sky is beautiful and I want to see it. On rare nights, when it's really clear and the neighbor has the klieg lights off, I can see the Milky Way.

Outdoor lighting can be helpful. It doesn't have to be very bright to be effective, and it can be shielded so the light goes where it's needed and not to blot out the stars. International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) I make an exception for holiday lights; I'm not a complete monster.
posted by theora55 at 3:05 PM on December 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

I just came in to mention Dark Sky preservation. It's an environmental issue, too. Human light sources have an impact on animals, as well as people and energy use.

I turn mine off when I go to bed. Say between 10 and 11. I can't see how anyone or anything would benefit much by my keeping them on.
posted by Miko at 3:22 PM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm going to go against the MeFi groupthink/wet blanket brigade here and say if they're LEDs just leave them on. They're not that bright and they don't use much energy.

Incandescents are a different matter.
posted by stewiethegreat at 9:34 PM on December 11, 2020

I don’t know why you’d leave lights on overnight when next to no one will see them, but then I’ve never had outdoor lights so maybe I’d change my mind if I ever did. Still, seems weird to me.

Using only a small amount of electricity is still using some electricity, for next to no benefit. And light pollution is bad enough without adding more, again for no benefit. Between everyone, it all adds up.
posted by fabius at 6:43 AM on December 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don’t know why you’d leave lights on overnight

Because they're on the same circuit as my porch light?
posted by Rash at 9:03 AM on December 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Why leave a porch light on overnight?
posted by Miko at 8:41 PM on December 12, 2020

Security - in my case, very few streetlights in my neighborhood. Porch lights (and Christmas lights) burn all night long, here (although those with the elaborate, inflatable displays switch off that stuff at midnight). So the answer to this question is really, it depends.
posted by Rash at 9:27 AM on December 13, 2020