Incandescent Christmas Lights VS. LED Christmas Lights

I get asked all the time about LED lights while doing installations. People ask me if I use all LED's. When they find out that 95% of all of the lights we use are incandescent, I get weird looks. This post here is to give you the real differences between incandescent and LED Christmas lights and hopefully help you to choose which one's to use.

LED Lights Pros

• The operational life of current white LED lamps is 100,000 hours. This is 11 years of continuous operation, or 22 years of 50% operation.
• The key strength of LED lighting is reduced power consumption. When designed properly, an LED circuit will approach 80% efficiency, which means 80% of the electrical energy is converted to light energy. The remaining 20% is lost as heat energy. Compare that with incandescent bulbs which operate at about 20% efficiency (80% of the electrical energy is lost as heat).
• Rugged durability – LED lights have no fragile filament to contend with, and no fragile tube. They are resistant to heat, cold, and shock.
• LED bulbs can come in a range of colors that surpasses incandescent.

LED Light Cons

• Price - LED Christmas lights are about 90% more expensive with mini lights. With C7 ad C9 bulbs, LED's are nearly 900% more expensive.
• LED lights are a different look than incandescent. (Purely a preference.) In my opinion, incandescent bulbs look much more elegant.
• LED lights strobe. This is part of what gives a different look.
• Although the lamp life of LED's is a very long time, they are built with the same wiring as incandescent lights. Meaning, if you're putting up and taking down your display every year, about 15% of the wiring will fail.

Incandescent Light Pros

• Inexpensive in comparison to LED's.
• Readily available at many stores.
• Replaceable bulbs if one burns out.
• In my opinion, they still look nicer.

Incandescent Light Cons

• Consume more power.
• Not able to run as many strings of lights together. With incandescent mini lights, you can only string up to 5 strands together. With LED's you can string up to 70 together.
• Failure rate. Every year we replace about 20% of our incandescent lights.

In what scenario's would you use LED's or incandescent lights?

• Displays for your home that are put up and taken down every year. - Incandescent
• Displays that will stay up year round. - LED
• Displays that don't have a lot of power, but you would like a lot of lights. - LED
• If you're on a budget. - Incandescent
• If you're creating a display that flashes on and off with music. - Incandescent (LED's need to warm up and may give a delay.)

You can of course use whatever type of lighting you would like to wherever you would like to. These are my opinions of using incandescent versus LED's. Primarily the biggest decision is going to be what "look" you like the most.

I hope this helps answer any questions you may have about Christmas lights, and as usual, if you have questions, PLEASE ASK! I'm here to help you make your home or business beautiful for the season!