Christmas Decorations - LED lights

So it's almost that time of the year again. Christmas is coming and all the stores around the UK have already put up the decorations. It's all commercially driven, of course. Most households won't put up their decorations until well into December. Still, it's a good time as any to shop around for Christmas decorations before all the festivities are well under way.

I love putting up the Christmas decorations, particularly the incandescent fairy lights. To me, nothing screams Christmas like a string of multicoloured bulbs.

Other family members aren't quite so keen on it. I guess it's more to do with their upbringing - they don't identify with Christmas as I have growing up. They are even less keen this year because of the rising cost of electricity. Coupled with the poor economic climate, it's more important than ever to find ways of saving money.

Pretty on the eye. Not good for the wallet...

Fortunately, saving money doesn't necessarily leaving out the lights altogether. I did a bit of online shopping and came across this website: http://www.lights4fun.co.uk. It's a family run business that specialises in lighting for all occasions.

The Christmas lights they sell are all LED. The thing with LEDs are you can apparently save up to 90% on your bills. Specifically, the equation goes something like this: 10 LEDs = 1 incandescent bulb. Since I want to save a bit of money over Christmas, I thought it might be worthwhile to try them out. There was a bit of a clearance sale going on, so I bought a few.

LEDs never really did it for me in the past. I don't think they really captured the spirit of Christmas the way old fashioned incandescent bulbs did. Maybe they were too white. Maybe the colours aren't quite the same. Whatever it was, I just preferred the incandescent bulbs.

Having opened and tried out the lights when I received it, however, I was quite impressed. They now have LED lights in 'warm white' and for me, these look the best out of the bundle. The coloured lights didn't seem all that at first glance, but having hung them up just to see what they would look like, they looked pretty good. They're brighter than my old set of lights, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

So does this spell the end of the incandescent lights? I still see them being sold in places like Amazon, but having a brief scan on the web, it seems that most Christmas light vendors now favour LED lights - Lights4Fun even go as far as saying this is what they specialise in. I guess it means that incandescent lights are being phased out gradually, if not all at once.

I grew up with the incandescent lights, so it'll be a shame to see them go. But I guess we have to move on with the times, particularly since the LEDs are more energy efficient, last longer and are better for the environment.

Lights out. Let's do more for the environment and save money.